Another way to get rid of lily beetles

Joyce sent me an email with her solution for killing lily beetles. She says it works on both the adults and the larvae.

She takes one cup (250 mL) cooking oil, 1/2 cup (125 mL) Sunlight dish detergent, puts them in a one-litre bottle and fills it up with water. She sprays the insects directly and reports that they die within seconds.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but if I did, I would be watching to see if there are any negative effects on the plants too. While this spray sounds like it certainly would kill just about any insect on contact, it might be a bit intense for at least some plants.

If you try it, let me know what kind of results you get.

And thanks, Joyce, for sharing your spray recipe with me.

I hate my snowball bush!

To the point that I am thinking of digging up my Viburnum opulus roseum. I planted this baby two years ago. Last year it showed every sign of settling in well, despite the attack of the mad arborist. This spring - oh joy! - flower buds. Visions of big fluffy floral snowballs floated in my head.

Then I read online that this particular viburnum is subject to aphid attacks. I was pretty sanguine about it. I hadn't seen the slightest sign of aphids in two years. Two days later - I kid you not - I followed the trail of some over-enthusiastic ants to find colonies of black aphids at the growing tips.

This is patently unfair! I should give up reading on the Internet; it appears to be bad for my plants. I pulled out the all-purpose spray, which is definitely fatal to aphids. The problem is, these bugs are very good at protecting themselves. As they attack a leaf, it curls around them and makes them very difficult to spray. You can see the curled leaf in the photo. It's virtually impossible to get them all, no matter how good the spray is. So I'm going to go out and snip off all the affected parts and drop them into soapy water. If that doesn't work the temptation to dig the thing out will grow even greater.

Perhaps a Japanese maple...

Technorati tag: Viburnum

Fighting earwigs

One day about 20 years ago, my husband came back from buying pesticide and announced, "The guy at the store said earwigs will arrive next year." Huh? Well, "the guy" was right. Apparently these little darlings got off a ship from Japan and worked their way slowly across the continent. The next year I saw my first earwig, and although I'm not particularly squeamish about bugs, it grossed me out. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say, and I'm no longer grossed out by them (OK, just a little), but they certainly don't inspire affection. They are on the extremely short list of things that I can kill without the slightest twinge of remorse. (For those of you who are unhealthily curious, houseflies, mosquitoes and lily beetles are the rest of the list. I even feel sorry for slugs, if you can imagine it.)

Now a variety of experts will insist that earwigs feed on decaying vegetable matter and aphids and are therefore beneficial. They are probably right most of the time. But if earwigs are short of the appropriate decaying materials, or if temptation is just too strong, they are only too happy to reduce any tender foliage and a number of flowers to lace. I wish I'd had an expert with me the night I went out to do battle with the slugs that were eating my baby marigolds down to a stub and found them covered in earwigs instead. They are also fond of coleus, salvia, nasturtiums (especially the flowers), monkshood flowers, pepper plants (not deterred by hot ones) and just about anything with thin enough leaves. And this is a list just from my personal experience.

There are several ways of dealing with earwigs. I generally ignore them until they start causing damage, because in small numbers they don't do enough harm to bother with them. But when I find leaves reduced to lace, I take action.

Earwig patrol: I go out around 10:00 at night with a flashlight and a one litre spray bottle filled with a 10% ammonia solution plus a teaspoon of dish detergent. I do the rounds of damaged plants, spraying any earwigs and slugs I find. The ammonia kills the slugs on contact, and the soap will kill the earwigs within a few minutes. I'm inclined to believe that they leave some kind of chemical trail like ants, because if I do the rounds a second time, I will find a fresh crop of earwigs chomping in the identical places, right down to the precise leaf. You can also do this with a bowl of soapy water and knock both slugs and earwigs into them, but that requires three hands or a willing partner in pest hunting, both of which tend to be in short supply for me. A flashlight mounted on a hard hat would help, but the neighbours think I'm weird enough already.

Diatomaceous earth: I sprinkle this anywhere I'm reasonably sure the earwigs will be crawling, with my favourite place being under potted plants on the patio where they will often hide out in the daytime.

Traps: The easiest that I know of, (and as you may have noticed, I am a great fan of easy) is to partially sink a shallow container, like a tuna can, in the soil, with a layer of soya sauce and a layer of cooking oil. The smell of the soya sauce apparently attracts them and the cooking oil makes it impossible for them to get out and probably smothers them. Anyway, if I've got an earwig infestation going on, it will be full of dead earwigs in the morning.

The Earwig Stomp: Put on your favourite dance music (optional) and stomp on them as they skitter across the patio or sidewalk. You won't get great numbers this way, but it's emotionally satisfying and burns off calories. Do wear shoes...

All-purpose spray working on scale too

This is just a quick note to follow up on my scale posting. When I was out spraying my anemone against sooty mildew with my all-purpose spray, I figured I might just as well try it on the few remaining spots of scale on my oleanders. It worked like a charm. And it seems to have eliminated the spider mites on my tropical hibiscus too. I had been planning on using insecticidal soap, but the all-purpose Murphy spray was handy. Handy is good.

So, in case anyone is keeping score, the spray is good for:

• preventing mildew
• helping plants that already have it
• stopping rodents from gnawing on plants (on the basis of what others have told me)
• stopping tomcats from spraying a particular spot
• killing scale (at least the kind that infests houseplants)
• killing spider mites

Follow the links for the formula.

All-purpose spray saves the anemone

Anemone tomentosa 'Robustissima' is quite the name and it was largely on the strength of that name that I bought this plant. "Robustissima" means very robust and I figured that was a pretty good guarantee that I was getting a tough-as-nails plant despite its deceptively fragile-looking flowers. Well, tough as nails it may be, but even nails can rust.

As each leaf has emerged this spring, it has promptly acquired unpleasant dark colours that it is not supposed to have. It is a plant that normally appreciates a moist setting, but we have had double the normal amount of rain this month. When you combine the almost unceasing rain - how do they survive in Vancouver!? - with the heavy clayish soil that most of Ottawa is built on, this tough little plant is gasping for help.

Janet to the rescue.

The dark colours didn't look quite like mildew, but I figured it was probably something fungal nonetheless, given the circumstances and the fact that this same plant had healthy foliage last spring in somewhat dryer conditions. Now the cheapest, easiest way to deal with - or better yet, prevent - mildew and its ilk is with a baking soda solution. Seeing as I have both a limited number of spray bottles and with such a small garden, not enough plants to empty most of them over the season, I added the baking soda to my favorite home-made pest repellent. After picking off any leaves that looked beyond hope, I've been spraying the poor little anemone as well as an equally unhappy-looking bee balm during breaks in the rain, and they have both perked up admirably.

To make this spray, you measure 2 tbsp. (30 mL) Murphy's Oil Soap, one capful of yellow mouthwash, and 1 tsp. (5 mL) baking soda into a one litre spray bottle and top up with water. Spray on anything that is inclined to mildew, like phlox, bee balm, anemones, or anything that critters like to munch on, as rabbits and squirrels don't like the taste. Renew about once a week or after a rain.

I've also found it effective to stop tom cats from marking their territory. Before my female cat was fixed, the local toms would spray the wall by the back door till the odour was enough to make you gag. Spraying the wall with this solution broke them of the habit.

Now if you'll excuse me, it isn't raining today (yes!), and I've got plants to spray.

Oleander and full-scale battle

Ahh, the sweet scent of vanilla! Ahh, the clusters of rose-like blossoms! Ahh, the oh-so-Mediterranean look of potted oleanders! Argh, the joys of scale!

What is scale you ask? Well, follow my dirty fingernail to the answer. Scale is a nasty little sucking insect, that like barnacles on a hull, latch onto your plant for dear life. They particularly like to hide on the underside of the leaves, right by the central vein, where the sucking is sweetest.

A few little spots of scale here and there are not going to threaten your plant or your sanity. The problem is, a few little dots left to themselves quickly become quite a few little dots and can turn into a full-scale infestation. (Oh no! There she goes again!) In the spirit of "a stitch in time saves nine", the easiest way to deal with scale is to simply scrape it off with a fingernail. My two oleanders flank my chair on the patio, so I just have to turn my head and reach over. This is usually enough.

But when I have been inattentive - like over the winter - they can multiply to the point where I can't keep up. That's when I bring out the big guns. Cepacol. Yes, you read right, good old yellow mouthwash. Listerine will do just fine too, as long as it's yellow. Last spring I brought my freckly oleanders outside and sprayed them liberally with yellow mouthwash. A few days later, the scale flaked off instead of squishing - a sure sign it was dead. I then had the entire summer to remove them at my leisure, a few little scrapes at a time. Dead scale doesn't breed. I haven't had to repeat the treatment since.

Sure there are pesticides that will work, although not very many. Scale's hard shell makes it difficult to kill. But the mouthwash is probably considerably easier on the environment, and anything you don't pour into your spray bottle can be used to freshen your breath.

By the way, do you think the bags of leaves add anything to the Mediterranean ambiance?