Busy One,

I don't know what's worse---that the blister beetles are there or that the water is out. I just hate that they are stripping your pepper plants. I'd be so bummed out if they were here doing that to my pepper plants.

I haven't seen a blister beetle yet. Now, since I said that, there will be 700 of them in the garden the time next I walk into it. I just came in from weeding and didn't see too much of anything in terms of bad bugs, except for stinkbugs which are becoming a big issue on tomatoes. They must like tomatoes the most because they aren't bothering anything else yet.

I actually don't completely hate the blister beetles because they eat grasshopper eggs.

However, if the blister beetles are at your place and the stink bugs and grasshoppers are at mine, then surely the leaf-footed bugs cannot be far behind.

The deer are coming to the fence and eating anything that dares to grow outside the fence, so some of the tomato plants that send foliage out through the fence are being pruned regularly by the deer. Let that be a lesson to the tomato plants to stay inside their cages and inside the fence.

We're in our 13th year here and have not yet suffered from a serious water shortage. Our pressure was low once when one of the wells was out of operation and undergoing repair, but we've never even had water rationing, not even in the worst of years.

My garden continues producing well as long as I keep watering it every 3rd or 4th day. I'll keep that up until the water bill gets too high.

Some summers are just this way, aren't they? It is almost enough to make one long for a nice, wet, flooding kind of summer like we had in 2007. We weren't that crazy about all the excess moisture at the time, but compared to how miserably the gardens produce when excessively dry, that really wet year is looking more and more like "the good old days" to me.

Stay cool and hydrated while hauling that hay! Our ranching friends sold their ranch so we no longer spend a couple of weeks hauling hay every summer and I kind of miss it. (Please note that I don't miss it enough that I volunteer to go out and help anyone else haul hay!)

Dawn

When I lived in Lone Grove, we had two water lines on our street. Two of us were on SOWC water and the rest on Lone Grove water. Neighbors would come by to tell me that I shouldn't be watering and would ask if I didn't know we weren't allowed to water. Not only did I not have rationing, my water tasted MUCH better than theirs.

You can use a handvac and suck those blister beetles off of your plants. Then dump them into a pail of soapy water. I haven't tried it yet, but am on the hunt for a cheap handvac.

I guess I have been unlucky but I have had two hand vacs and neither of them would pick up bugs. Of course, we have Japanese Beetles and they do cling.

Carol,

Here in Love County, those of us who have Thackerville Water have no issues and no complaints. Those from approximately Marietta northward have SOWC and have water rationing pretty much every dry summer (though not yet this year). Thackerville Water is very well managed and I am so happy/relieved they are the water provider in our neighborhood. And, by saying that, I do not mean to imply any other water companies are not well managed. All I know is that we've never yet had water rationing, not even in 2003 or 2005 when others did, so I am happy with our water company and wouldn't want the other one.

If your garden is close enough to the house to run an extension cord, you can use a Shop Vac. They probably have enough suction to suck up not only squash bugs and blister beetles but small animals and birds as well, so use the Shop Vac carefully. : )

Dawn

Dawn, that shop vac idea is one of the reasons I am running electric to two of my gardens. I figure I can use it for an electric fence, vac bugs and start my tiller (old tiller with 110 volt starter).

We have water rationing every year, but so far the only stage we have gone into is watering every other day, which is not much of a problem.

I checked on having a well drilled a couple of years ago and was told it would cost from $1500 to $2500. The payback would be long even if we got good water.

Larry

Dawn, I got a chuckle out of your post because my shop vac would suck the plant out of the ground. My neighbor was using his shop vac at our house one day to vacuum up some water, and I could see the water flowing across the concrete to be sucked up by the shop vac. I had never had one that strong but the next day I had one because I went to Joplin Home Depot and bought one. LOL

I once had a very small shop vac which we used to clean the cars and it was about the size of a gallon jar and had a handle on top. I think I need another one that size to use in the garden, and yes, I do have electricity at the edge of my garden. In fact, I have electricity in a lot of places outside. When we moved here we had one outlet on the front of the house and one more inside a small storage shed on the back of the lot. Everytime we have had something done that involved electricity, we have added another outlet, so it is pretty easy to find one to use since I can think of six we have added.

SOWC was pretty good when we lived there so things must be drying up even more.

Soonerg'ma
thanks for the heads up. I'm not going to waste my $ if they dont work that well.

Larry,

One of our newest neighbors tried to have a well drilled when they built their house 3 or 4 years ago, but all they got were dry holes...and they had our county's most experienced well guy doing the drilling. I think something has changed in our local area. A lot of our springs have quit running, and some folks near us who have wells say the wells dry up very quickly in summer, which didn't happen years ago. I assume the aquifer is dropping or something.

Sheri, I've used an ancient DustBuster Vac to vaccum up bugs and it worked. I don't think the newer hand vacs are nearly as powerful as some of the very old ones are. Well, unless you buy a Dyson hand vac, but that would be quite an expense.

They have commercial garden vacs that be hooked up behind a tractor and pulled through a field of crops, but those things undoubtedly are far out of our price range too. I guess we're stuck with the bugs.

Dawn

What will they come up with next? Keep the info coming though, some of the things you tell us about amaze me. I'm still waiting to use my flame weeder, we've been under the burn ban ever since I got it. I did notice some of the bindweed had burned up from the extreme heat and lack of water. Yea!

Help!!! I live in a wooden house in Hawaii and the blisters beetles invaded my house. There are thousands of them every night. My husband and I get blisters now and then.. so uncomfortable..!!! I vaccum them and put them in a plastic bag but next day, they are all over again... I think they are nesting in my wooden ceiling...what to do? I've been trying to avoid chemicals/sprays...I tried spray once and didn't kill them... What to do to get rid of them? any ideas??

I've noticed that they are drawn to light. When our back door light is on they fly to it and tend to get into the house. So, if one had a bug zapper I bet they would work on blister beetles. I've always been leery of bug zappers because they seem so... non-selective.

Also, last week I went into the garden to find hordes of blister beetles stripping the last surviving tomato plants, my peppers and even a squash plant. In desperation I grabbed a red bottle of fly spray (for horses) it basically consists of oils and pyrethrins. Anyway, it worked. If sprayed fairly heavily, it killed them very quickly. But it also burned the foliage on my plants. But used lightly, especially around the base of the plants, it repels them.
I'm stubborn. I still prefer to hand pick. I crush their little heads, doing this almost without thinking, while inspecting the garden. But one has to be super careful not to get anything from their abdomen on their fingers and also not to tough any part of ones own body before washing. They have their name for a good reason!

George
Tahlequah, OK