On 6/21/2016 6:26 PM, George Shirley wrote:
On 6/21/2016 12:45 PM, Frank wrote:
On 6/21/2016 1:12 PM, George Shirley wrote:
On 6/21/2016 11:35 AM, Frank wrote:
On 6/21/2016 11:01 AM, George Shirley wrote:
Stink bugs are messing up the tomatoes big time. Put out some
containers
of water under each bush this morning, hoping the !@#$ bugs drown.
Put a
little cooking oil in each container, also hoping that keeps the bugs
from getting away. We shall see.

Picked another small bucket of crowder peas this morning. Things
seem to
become ripe overnight but they sure shuck easy, a sort of zipper
pea is
what this variety is. Pop one end, pull down and the hull just opens
up.
Makes the job much easier.

Harvested another batch of figs, seems that about a dozen figs ripen
each morning. Miz Anne put up two pints of fig jam yesterday and
probably will do another small batch tomorrow or the next day. I alter
the "So Easy to Preserve" recipe based on number of figs to be used.
Works pretty good as long as we follow the recipe change.

Going to be hot again today, in the low nineties the weather folk say,
the skies are cloudy with dark clouds and a promise of rain is in
sight.

George

I think soapy water is better as it breaks their surface tension and
they drown. There are stink bug traps.
They were a plague here for several years but now seem abated.
Maybe bats or birds are now finding them tasty or a wasp predator has
moved in.
We've been here since December 2012 and seldom saw a stink bug until
this summer. I've been thinking of some liquid soap too, used that
before and it worked. Thanks for reminding me of it.

The pea patch also has some sort of tiny stinging bug too, I thought
they were ants at first but they don't look like ants. They're about the
size of the periods in this email, tried looking them up online but
there seems to be a lot of tiny stinging bugs out there. We try to grow
our grub organically so guess I will just keep squishing the dammed
things.

I contended with chiggers but not sure they were on edible plants. In
shorts I'd spray DEET on my legs when gardening.

Stink bugs are funny as they like warm crevices in the winter and then
escape in the spring. I think they only have one generation in a
moderate climate but more in warm areas. In the fall I could not put on
a pair of gloves or shoes sitting in the garage as they might be full of
them. Those that got into the house I'd vacuum up with a Dust Buster
and after I got a lot I'd empty into a bucket of soapy water on the
deck. Once found one floating in the water in my coffee pot and once
during dinner munched one thinking it was a small piece of meat off my
plate. Out in the fall hunting they would crawl down my shirt collar
and I'd end up killing them and encounter the stink. Fortunately it
does not last long.
I've never found one in any of the many homes we've had in the 56 years
of marriage. We haven't had any since we moved here in 2012 until this
spring, now we have lots of them. It's to bad Mockingbirds don't eat
them as the mockers really love our figs.

If you kill them on your body while hunting it should hide your own
scent. I can't imagine a critter that couldn't smell a stink bug. G
Had a dog many years ago who used to bite a stink bug and then start
spitting and foaming at the mouth. Stupid dog never stopped biting the
bugs until he got run over.

Wiki says stink bugs first showed up in 1998 in Allentown, PA and
apparently been spreading since to the rest of the country.

Years ago I recalled the plague of the gypsy moth which was wrecking New
England and caused lot of problems here in DE and PA denuding and
killing trees. That subsided and you hear little about them today.

Similarly Japanese beetles which used to be a problem here appear
subsided probably due to the virus that attacks them.

Too bad problems I have like crab grass or Japanese stilt grass have no
natural enemies.