Grasshoppers in My Garden

So the one good thing that may have occurred due to the crazy rain we had the last couple of weeks is that the grasshoppers I discovered a couple days before it started seem to have disappeared. Will they come back? I don't know. I hope not.

Here's a little guy I found on my pepper plant that has produced a total of, yes, one pepper all summer. Miraculously, it started flowering again a few days after the rain stopped. I don't know if it's coincidental that I also haven't seen a grasshopper lately ... I have seen them in other parts of my yard.

A grasshopper on my bell pepper plant ... look in the middle.

Grasshoppers may be the reason my fall lettuce seedlings keep getting eaten (they like their lettuce).

So what to do?

Birds Eating My Seedlings ... Drunken Dragonfly to the Rescue!

Or at least that's the hope! My man and I went to the Flower Bin here in Longmont a couple weeks ago in search of both veggies to harvest in the fall and for something that would hopefully deter birds from my garden.

As I've written before, birds were eating my lettuce seedlings, making me think I needed to grow them a little larger and transplant them into the garden. But first I wanted to see if I could find something to deter them from eating them in the first place.

We found just one thing that was shiny (I have read in many places online that hanging CDs from a tree nearby, etc helps) and that I actually wanted in my garden: a Drunken Dragonfly made by Paul's Metal Petals.

It's made of silverware (cool, right?) and seems to be reflective enough to keep birds away. I only have anecdotal evidence, but the seeds I planted the same day that I put the garden ornament in the ground have turned into seedlings and have not yet been eaten by birds.

Check it out:

The Flea Beetles Have Moved to My Kale

I think I should have just left the arugula in the ground to attract the flea beetles that subsequently moved to my kale. I came home from vacation to this:

Flea beetle damage on my kale

Flea beetle damage on my kale

Now, the little buggers were already taking a few bites here and there before I left, but they seem to have multiplied.

What Are Those Tiny Red Mites Hanging Out with My Coleus?

I've got fading coleus leaves and red spider mites. These tiny, tiny red bugs are hanging out on my raised flower bed where my two coleus plants are not exactly thriving. (They are growing, just much more slowly than I had anticipated.)

So what do I do about those spider mites? According to this website, the poppy-seed sized red mites thrive when humidity is low and can be controlled by cleaning the leaves, increasing humidity near the plants (not sure how that is accomplished outside!) or spraying the leaves with a soap spray. I think I'll start with the latter.

As for the fading color of my red coleus leaves, I may have over-fertilized. Or the sun exposure is affecting it. The jury's still out, but because it is still growing, I'm not going to worry yet!

Fading red coleus leaves ...

Building My Defenses Against Pests, Naturally

In my second year of gardening, I'm super-paranoid that my garden is going to get taken over by pests of all stripes. The horror stories I read online have entire gardens getting swallowed whole by a monster swarm of something - slugs, beetles, whatever.

Last year I had very little issue with pests in my garden, which is lucky because I had no idea what I was doing. I've read a lot since then and of course learned from the issues I did have last year.

While my gardening is not strictly organic, I have no desire to put pesticides on the plants I plan to put in my mouth. I also respect the animals - including my dog - that may venture into the garden from time to time.

What surprised me in my reading was that certain plants actually can act like pesticides without the chemicals. Plants like garlic, onion, sage, mint and others have a stronger smell and may mask the smell of other plants that attract the insects we do not want to attract to our gardens. Certain flowers are recommended as well. I plan to plant some of those as well right next to my garden.

There are also plants that attract the right kind of insects to your garden, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Baby steps.

I started with sage and mint.

This weekend I planted both. I planted the mint in containers, set in two places in the garden.