My question would be how long have you been gardening? If it's been a few years that answers your question. I've lived in this spot going on 12 years and have seen 3. And I'm outside a lot too. I would be watchful and wear gloves when moving things around, but I wouldn't get overly concerned.

I was stung by scorpions twice before I finally smartened up to wearing gloves. I like tight leather gloves. The OSU fact sheet states our common scorpion does not have a painful bite. I wish the clown that wrote that would come over to my house and offer his flesh as a sacrificial fact finding mission.

randy

This is only my third or fourth year of gardening. So it sounds like I'm operating on exactly your timetable!

Thanks for the response! Looks like I'll need to begin shopping for doggie gloves in about 3 more years ;-)

I saw black widows in our vegetable garden for a couple of years. They liked to spin their webs inside the tomato plants and their tomato cages. In general, they preferred to be in shady, hidden-type spots. They were here, and there were a lot of them, for 2 or 3 years. Then, poof....they were gone. I still have them in the shrub beds around the house, but not in the veggie garden. As long as your dogs are not sticking their noses into shrubs or groundcovers, they probably are at low risk of being bitten.

Randy--After that clown visits your place, send him over here and I'll introduce him to our scorpions too! We don't see as many scorpions as we did the first few years, but I remember quite well that painful bite. I wear tight leather gloves too, and NEVER wear open-toed shoes or sandals outside because, if I do, those scorpions will find my feet in a heartbeat.

Dawn

You don't by any chance live in Garvin County, do you? :) We have poisonous spiders so bad here, I called the county extension agent for advice, and he told me this place is a hotbed for the Brown Recluse and Black widow spiders. I wound up having to hire a pest control company because I was finding, on average, three Brown Recluse spiders a week INSIDE my home last summer.

In the past nine months, I have found eight black widows, the last being in my greenhouse in the opening of a concrete block. I admit I am TERRIFIED of these spiders... I lived in Murray County for twenty years and only saw 3 black widows and 1 fiddle back the entire time. Then I move to Garvin County and they are rampant here. I had hoped the onslaught last summer was due to all the flooding we had here, but the past week or two I have found six more fiddle back spiders in my bathtub and stuck to glue boards inside my home. Time to call the pest control guy again, and he was just here last month...

BTW, the best home remedy for a scorpion sting is lemon or lime juice. Just squeeze the juice on top of the sting site and the pain will instantly drop considerably. Even those little plastic juice holders that look like a lemon or lime will work. I've only been stung once by a scorpion, and I was amazed at how quickly the lime juice worked on stopping my pain. I learned to wear leather gloves while moving rocks after that sting!

Dawna,

Thanks for the lemon/lime juice tip. I'll have to remember that one.

I cannot believe how many poisonous spiders you are finding inside your house.

We had a lot of venomous spiders and scorpions for the first 2 or 3 years after we built the house, but I don't see many anymore (we've been here 9 years). I still see them in the garage/barn and sheds, and outside in shady spots around the yard, but not indoors. (Knock on wood that I didn't just jinx us.)

I have found that spraying Cobweb Eliminator in spots where they build webs helps cut down on the number of webs and spiders in places like buildings.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Cobweb Eliminator Info

I did see one black widow on my tomatoes a couple of years ago. It was underneathe the tomato leaf, ugh, scary looking creatures! I used to have more brown recluses in my house but they have seemed to thin out. I have found two snakes in my house, but when ya think about it...any place a mouse can get in a snake can also. I didnt like the spiders at all but freaked out over the snakes!

I live in Pittsburg County, and I have tons of brown recluse spiders in my house. They get really bad from mid-May until the fall.
There's no getting rid of them. The only thing I know to do it to put out glue traps.

I didn't know much at all about Brown Recluse spiders until I read a thread here on this forum last summer. In June we started seeing a whole lot of spiders inside our house, and because of that GW thread, I started looking at the spiders I killed with a magnifying glass. I was horrified to find they were Brown Recluse spiders. We finally hired a pest control company because I was literally obsessing about the spiders, dreaming about them, scared to put my hand anyplace I couldn't see into, really scared to death. And that was very unusual for me, as I've always "lived" outside and had more than my share of spiders crawl across me, and they'd never fazed me before. But the Brown Recluse are a whole 'nother ball game...

I've too found that the best thing for killing them are glue boards. We have glue boards hidden behind all our furniture and along the baseboards, trying to catch as many BR spiders as possible. We've never had a problem with any other bug in our house except brown recluse spiders. :( I don't know why we have so many here. The county extension agent told me he thought it was because we have so many thousands of acres of agricultural crops grown in this area. And also maybe because our house is log and cedar. But we also have them in our shop, and it's a steel building. So who knows??

Y'all are scaring me about the black widows hiding on the tomato plants. At least I will now be aware they might hide amongst the tomatoes, and pay attention. Once as I was feeding my horses, I glanced in my colt's feed bucket before I poured in his oats. To my horror, there was a black widow spider sitting on a tumble weed inside the bucket. I tried to shake it out to kill it, but it hung on tightly with me bouncing the bucket off the ground many times. So I took the bucket up to the house for DH to kill the spider for me, as I was totally creeped out. Lo and behold, when he bounced the bucket on the concrete driveway, a second black widow came from underneath the lip of the bucket. That nearly scared me to death! Two black widows on one bucket at the same time! I felt so lucky it hadn't bitten me as I bounced that bucket on the ground over and over, trying to knock the first spider loose. Or bitten my horse if I hadn't looked in the bucket before pouring his feed inside.

I have to say, if I didn't love my new home so much I think I would pack my bags and move back to Murray county! These poisonous spiders scare me so bad it's unreal. I know I sound like a big sissy but they're probably about the only things in life that does scare me.

I think I could find a black widow any time I chose to. They like to hide under boards and in rock piles. Haven't seen them in the bee hives here. But when we lived in Mexico I would find them on hive inner covers EVERY TIME I opened a hive (they consider honey bees a delicacy). But no one in my family has every been bitten by one. We are very careful not to put our hands under anything, when lifting, until we see what might be clinging to the bottom side. If I'm moving a lot of rubble or boards I will wear gloves too.

"Bugs," especially stinging/biting bugs, seem to me to be one of the best arguments for keeping some free range poultry. Guineas, chickens and even ducks really help clean them up. But, I can't let any of them (I don't have guineas) run in the garden.

George
Tahlequah

I read somewhere once that the average acre of rural land can have up to 1 million spiders per acre, and based on how many I see here, I can believe it. Of course, most are not dangerous. And, they are beneficial.....they eat tons of bugs.

Many years ago, I was bitten on the hand by a brown recluse spider while I was cleaning out a closet. I was lucky as my bite was not too serious. I had a discolored area on my hand around the bite for months, and felt a little sick for a few days, but that was it. However, a woman I worked with had been bitten on her shoulder by one and her bite necrotized, and she eventually had to have skin grafts.

George, you know that I love my chickens and guineas, and I can't imagine gardening without them. The guineas can roam the garden and sometimes do, but the chickens don't. of course, during gardening season. In the offseason, though, I let "the girls" into the garden and they dig and scratch to their heart's content. I don't have much of an ongoing pest problem around our house, and think the free-ranging poultry deserve the credit for that.

Dawn

My neighbor's free ranging chickens ate six of my tomato plants this week, completely killed them, and heavily damaged the others. I was not pleased to say the least. I was really glad we didn't have anything else planted yet. Yeah, I know... We're really slow this year but it's a new garden spot and the gardens been too wet to plant.

I was planning to put a pond in my greenhouse this summer, so I could enjoy it next winter. But after finding that black widow in my greenhouse, I'm really having second thoughts. I would want to add landscaping rocks around the pond and I think that would be a perfect haven for spiders to hide. So I may just stay with the sweet lick tubs I'm using now to hold my tropical aquatic plants.

I guess it could be worse... At least we don't have rattlesnakes here! :)

Dawna,

I can't believe that the neighbor's chickens ate your tomato plants! I guess our chickens are happy here in the yard as they don't roam over to the house next door, but the guineas roam everywhere. (Luckily, my neighbors don't mind!)

I keep my chickens out of the garden at this time of the year because their "digging and scratching" messes up beds of sprouting seeds, but they have never eaten a tomato plant to my knowledge. (They have been known to peck a tomato or two during hot weather.)

We're slow to plant warm-season plants this year because of the recurring late frosts, and I am really tired of it. Usually I have corn that is knee-high by now, and I haven't even planted it yet this year. I guess for the first couple of weeks of May, I'll be a planting fool.

I hope you won't let those pesky black widows keep you from having your pond inside the greenhouse....you know how much you enjoy it in the winter time!!! I wonder what eats black widows? Toads? Lizards? There's got to be some natural predator who'd like to live around the greenhouse pond and keep it spider free?

Dawn

Thanks for the info, everyone.

Wolflover: I'm in Oklahoma county. (Don't think my suburban neighbors would appreciate my getting chickens, but my dogs should would enjoy them!)

tadasana,

I have eight dogs, all of them medium to large in size, and free-ranging chickens and guineas. The dogs don't bother the chickens or the guineas, although a couple of the younger dogs do like to "sneak" into the chicken coop and steal and eat raw eggs. Of course, we had to teach the dogs to leave the poultry alone, but it wasn't hard.

The cats can be more of a problem. One of the cats likes to "play" with the guineas, by running up behind them and swatting their tail feathers with his paw. They mostly ignore him. However, when we have chicks or keats, we have to keep them securely locked up until they are as big as or bigger than the cats.

Dawn

Dawn,
Our garden is only 20' or less from the backside of our property line. Our neighbor has game chickens, and they wander all over the place, in my pastures, across the road to the pond, etc. They visit both of my pastures to eat the grain my horses drop. I wasn't surprised that the chickens ate my tomato plants (the garden is in an area between) our two horse pastures, 20' from the neighbor's property line. When we planted it, DH told me he thought we'd have problems with the chickens. It only took 36 hours before they came over and ate over half our plants. Well, I suppose they "ate" them, but there were quite a few leaves and blooms laying on the ground they'd pecked off. My one lone tomatillo plant that had quite a few blooms and baby tomatillos is now only half the size it was. I'm just sooo glad I hadn't planted my Sungold cherry tomato plants I grew from seed. I got them started late as I didn't know we would actually have a garden this year. So they weren't real big yet and thankfully I had waited to plant them. I would have been sad to lose them since they'd be hard to replace. I just love Sungold cherry tomatoes for my salads, or to eat straight off the plants. I also have quite a few more tomatillo plants I grew from seed that weren't planted either. We're mainly just growing a salsa garden, along with some eggplant, squash, peppers and okra, and maybe lettuce if I can hurry and get it planted. I really wanted some beans and peas too, but figured the deer would be right in the middle of the garden since they love peas more than I do. :)

Our neighbor has been trying to catch his game chickens to give away. He said since he doesn't fight chickens anymore *yippee* that he had no use for the game hens. He told us since he's having a hard time catching them on the roost, for us to shoot them or trap them if we can. I'm trying to give him a little more time to catch them before I plant anything else in our garden. I am still planning to plant a lot more tomato plants since I can a LOT of salsa.

I'm really surprised your chickens don't tear up your gardens. Mine at my old house always ate my tomatoes and terrorized my flower beds. I always kept them penned up except for the years of the grasshopper plagues. And those years, the grasshoppers ate everything first so I didn't have to worry about the chickens damaging my plants. :)

Dawna

I read in a nursing journal that the average person SWALLOWS 3 spiders EVERY YEAR!!! Sweet dreams, everyone!!

Dawna,

The only real problem I have with the chickens is that the dig and scratch in the mulch, and I have to go out every now and then and rake it out evenly because they leave a lot of "hills and valleys". Maybe my chickens are spoiled by the huge numbers of bugs they can find and so, thus, they leave the plants alone? I just don't know.

I do have alot of trouble with the deer (seems they will eat anything, but especially okra and hollyhocks), the raccoons (corn!) and the coyotoes (melons).

Well, I hope the neighbors gets rid of those now-worthless gamebirds. Apparently a lot of people in Love County are keeping theirs, from what I can see. Now that the state has closed down the illegal racetracks (yea!) in Love County, maybe they'll work on stopping the people who are still fighting the gamebirds. [I have no first-hand knowledge that illegal cockfighting is occurring in Love County, but it HAS to be....too many people still have dozens (or more) of the birds, and I am not so naive as to think that they are all just "pets".]

Renee, Well, thanks a lot. I am sure we all needed to know that. LOL I don't even want to think of all the things that are in factory-processed foods, either.

Dawn