Want to hear my rant? I'm doing the organic gardening thing too. If I were to change my mind and use pestacides I'd kill the spittle bugs first. They are covering my Maximillian Sunflowers. I have a big area set aside for them(bird food). They are COVERED with this nasty spit!!!! Yucky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!PJ

Aah!

A whine thread!

Here are a couple of additions to the list of things that make Texas gardening tough:

fahraints!

I was digging up grass to put in a flower bed, & about a zillion of the demons swarmed all over my feet & legs & hands & arms & bit the $*#@! outta me before I could jump back.

& mosquitos!

Between the faharaint welts & the mosquito bites (plus my cat fell off the tv the other night & landed on my legs with claws fully extended; ouch), I look like I've just returned from being lost in the Amazon basin for a month or so!

Who's next?

My turn! My turn!

I have scratches all over my arms from wrestling (planting) three flowering quince bushes. I hope that people don't start thinking that I am into that emo 'cutting' thing! LOL

I figure that I must really love gardening or am just extremely stubborn!

Necia

I love it all --- the good, the bad and the ugly !!! BUT --must admit that the "good" is better. Sylvia, I totally agree about "them fahrants" --- they have my feet looking like I have some kind of dread disease, and I cannot see their @$#%& beds in the grass. But when I sit here at my computer, look out at all the beauty around me, it makes it all worth while. Now --- I have to go out and spray Murphy's oil soap on my brugs -----

...that I spent most of my life digging in the dirt. As a child my excuse was mudpies, now my excuse is gardening. I think I just like mud. Nothing makes me happier than digging a hole.

...digging ginger sucks! Alpinia zerumbut is the ginger from hell, takes over, huge massive clumps of rhizomes that refuse to break apart and can't be chopped with an axe!! But I do have a nice hole there now.

.....sweat is a lubricant, it keeps our skin soft and shiny, well, shiny at least.

.....yes, enough mosquitoes can land on you to actually make you airborne.

....all my muscles hurt, I am always covered with bruises, scratches and/or bites. Hmmm, someone once suggested we wear name tags so we can spot each other out in public, I think the clothing, leaves and sticks in the hair, bruises, scratches, beat up nails and mud gives us away.

Tally HO!

*Sniff Sniff*

I'm so glad I am not all alone. Thank you for your support;-)

*Sniff Sniff*

Fireants. Thats the one thing I broke down and treated with a non organic product. I went through two bottles of the organic stuff and it just didn't keep them under control. So I had to go a step up. I got three kids that I would rather not get eaten alive. If the ants eat them, then who is going to take care of me when I am old?

PJ I haven't had the pleasure of learning about spittle bugs yet. Sounds like fun!

Sylvia, tell that kitty to be careful around the furless master!

Necia, maybe you have a good point. Perhaps gardeners are just a stubborn lot of people.

And carrie, of course it's beautiful! If its not dying!!!!LOL

Fahraint control:

Put 1 ounce of orange *oil* (not orange oil "product") in a gallon of water, add a squirt of liquid soap if it's handy, & pour the entire gallon over the undisturbed mound.

(If the mound is disturbed, some ants will rescue eggs & establish a new mound & make some of the eggs into a new queen. or queens.)

Wait an hour or so.

If there are still fahraints (not likely unless it's a huge mound or unless the mound is in a raised bed & has extensive tunnels like catacombs), do it again.

Orange oil is about $11 or so a quart, but 1 quart will make 16 gallons of mixture.

...a pint.

8 oz in a cup
16 oz in a pint
32 oz in a quart

sorry, been too long since I was in Home Ec!

I used to live in Beaumont area. I swear, you can put a stick in the ground there and it will grow. That area was so easy to garden in! I never watered, I didn't fertilize, and I just had to bring in the potted plants once a year for a few days. OTOH, the skeeters and mold were really bad there.
Gardening in the Austin area is much more difficult. Xeriscaping is my new garden theme. And then they still sometimes don't make it because of a freaky wet summer! :)

Don't want to hijack this thread, but could someone tell me how to pour a pint of anything on a fire ant mound and still not disturb it????? Whenever I pour anything on a mound, it starts to open the mound and spread it around a bit, no matter how slowly I do it and then the ants start coming out, all angry-like....

Sandy

Yeah, they'll swarm out, nothing you can do about that!

I use a 1-gallon plastic milk or water jug (small pour spout keeps the solution from coming out too forcefully) & start by pouring the solution in a circle around the outer edge to help prevent the fireants from escaping.

Where are you guys buying this orange oil?

I bought my orange oil at Wichita Valley nursery here in Wichita Falls. Unfortunatly, I left the bottle in the greenhouse and plastic bottle sprung a leak! I don't know if it was the intense summer heat (last summer) or the orange oil eating through the plastic, or maybe a combination of the two. Anyways, just be careful where you store it! It is too valuable to be treated the way I treated it!

Necia

Almost any nursery or garden supply place will have it.

I used to buy it at Home Depot or Lowe's, but I don't know if they still carry it;
you might call before you make a trip.

This spring I bought it at the place in Cedar Hill that has changed owners & names a few times;
I think it's Petal Pushers now.

& I bet Tractor Supply would have it, but, again, I'd call first.

I still buy it at Home Depot under the trade name of "Organic Orange TKO Super Concentrated Cleaner". It also states on the label at the bottom that it is made from the peel of an orange. Pricey stuff though, I think I pay 8 something for 8 ounces. Works like a charm, but you can't let it get on your plants without some damage.

All this whining made me think of what my son's teacher tells his 6th graders. If you're going to whine - get a tissue. Yep, we got the bugs and other gunk, but like the original poster mentioned, sometimes we need to be patient and the problems will resolve themselves naturally, or we can select organic items to help solve the problems.

Now, speaking of those "fahraints", there is also the fire ant bait called "Come and Get It" that contains synosad that is a hormone that makes the queen ants stop eating or laying eggs or something like that. It isn't a poison. The local master gardeners recommend the Texas Two-Step Method for dealing with fire ants. The first step is to broadcast such a bait over your entire yard. The second step is to sprinkle the bait around the mound without disturbing the ants. They will think it is food and take it to the queen who will eat it. You can also use the orange oil drench. I have noticed that sometimes those fire ants do create underground tunnels and have a back door to escape. Try to locate both entrances and drench all of it the best you can because if you get them at the front door, they will make a quick exit out the back salvaging what eggs they can carry. They are very smart insects. That is why it is so important not to disturb the mounds when treating them with the bait since they need to think they are finding food.

While reading this, I just realized that I still have dirt under my fingernails...

Kt

My b!tch is more particular to me, I think, than to most of you, but it can still go here, right?

I was doing really well with gardening until I got pregnant. Then I lost all my energy and got nauseous and locked myself in my air conditioning all summer. I was so grateful for this super-wet spring and summer, because NOTHING got watered!

But now that I'm out of the first trimester (and out of August) things are getting better. Which is nice not only for the garden, but for my toddler, who loves being outside and "wor-tin in da dah-den." Which mostly amounts to watering the patio and digging things up, but hey, as long as he's getting indoctrinated into gardening ...

I gotta admit, I love playing in the dirt. I like nothing better than digging a big ol' hole. I just can't DO all that right now, and that's so frustrating!

"I lost all my energy and got nauseous and locked myself in my air conditioning all summer."

I thought that was just life!

snork!

but just think:

Next year you'll have a new little budding gardener to cultivate.

OK...Here we go. Trying to landscape (more accurately...xeriscape) my new backyard. Decided to plant a few trees for some shade. Have been digging tree holes since last Thanksgiving. Still haven't planted a single tree...but I sure have a great collection of nice big limestone boulders. Perhaps by this November I'll have a hole big enough for a tree. I'm totally worn out! Used to live on the coast. There, when I wanted to plant a tree, I just dug a hole in the sand and stuck a tree in it. Voila! What on earth do you hill country gardeners (west of I35) do to prep a garden for all those lovely Texas native plants? Hire a jackhammer? I have the fireants, too...plus some other nasty little invisible ankle biters that eat and run...leaving me miserable with itchy welt-ridden legs each time I step out on the patio to admire my "future" garden. But where in the world could you ever find such gorgeous sunsets as we have right here in Texas? I love living in Austin.

I just realized that gardening in Texas sure beats trying to garden in upstate NY. First, fahr hants are nasty, but so much easier to avoid than black flies (at least until the hants learn to fly); in Texas you don't have to watch your lovely spring flowers broken down by a snowfall (usually); here we can garden 12 months, while in upstate NY gardeners are lucky to get five months, and during two of those you are wearing heavy clothing and shivering; and finally, Texas gardeners get to send photos of roses in bloom and vegetable gardens producing in November to the upstaters who are shoveling snow. Cruel, but fun. Gardening wouldn't be enjoyable without a little challenge, and in Texas gardening is so enjoyable!

It's true, we do get a lot more garden-time than the northerners. As much as we complain about the heat, it's great having our last frost in March (expect for this year, naturally) and being able to plant straight through November.

I have lived my entire life in Florida and then here recently in Texas.

I have NEVER had the pleasure of living in a cold snowy climate! I can't imagine what it must be like to go several months without being able to so much as dig in the dirt. Ack.

Mommyfox, individual specific whines are welcome here! Actually, anything that makes gardening harder than it should HAVE to be can count;-) Pregnancy qualifies!

Sylvia...thanks for the tip...I'll try pouring around the base of the ant mound first.

Rebecca...living in a cold snowy climate has some advantages! First and foremost, it tends to kill off a whole lot of bugs!!! Yea! And during a spring thaw, there isn't anything sweeter smelling than that fertile, wet earth. Those colder months give you more time to browse catalogs and shop for garden goodies, too. And...you get to be more of an expert at growing indoor plants!!

Just don't move to a much colder climate directly from TX....too much of a shock to the system. Just move north by a state or two first....LOL.

Sandy

OK, compared to feet of snow I guess I don't have too much to b***h about.
Though it would be kind of nice to put up your feet, drink coco and look at garden catalogs. Ah well, while they are shoveling snow we'll just have to battle fahraints.
Sam's had orange oil the other day when I was there, a gallon of it, don't remember the price. Not that orange oil product stuff.
Tally HO!

I've never lived where the ground freezes hard. That would freak me out. It would be like living ON an icecube.
Then again digging in hard,alkaline clay might be like the ground freezing.
Kayakita,Mattox or pick ax will get through the soil. I recommend wetting it without creating a lake. Heavy clay mud sucks. Also, amend,amend,amend. Leaves can be mowed down to a small size instead of being raked up. Leaves,compost etc... with soften the soil with organic matter and REALLY help drainage. I actually go out and collect leaves. My neighbors think I'm nuts. PJ

"Heavy clay mud sucks."

Yes, it does;
I had a shoe sucked off my foot one year when an overnight deluge saturated the ground.

Ah...Texas gardening. Ah....DEER!@#$%

'nuff said.

While we're whining... ooh, my turn...

Watering the house. That just ticks me off!

One day I'll get ambitious and put in flowerbeds surrounding the entire house... but not without first battling bermuda, and then it won't bother me... I'll have babies needing moisture, unless we have another freakishly weird wet year.

As for kentuck... I've been playing with the mulching mower and sat down in the office with the fan full force cooling off...I'm covered in fine mulch particles and we won't talk about my fingernails...

I'm trying to lasagna the grass out of the veggie garden, and when that works ;-) I'll lasagna the perimeter for beds. Texas comes with strange gardening terms! I'm going to have to join PJ in raiding neighbors layering materials, I can't manufacture enough on my own, yet!!!

I don't have any great fire ant destroy tactics... but once attacked pour white vinegar over the bites, takes the fire out fast and minimizes the blisters. Skeeters... got to be proactive and DEET up first.

I guess we were blessed this year, we really didn't have any bugs to speak of, a few grubs, an army of pill bugs, fireant evictions and relocations, but the worst was a family of tomato theiving rats living on the outskirts of the subdivision wall!

All in all we did good for being rookies to this bittersweet all consuming pastime of Texas Gardening.

I love this site, always great info, insight, ideas and some rip roaring laughs.

CHIGGERS!

The invisible eat and runners that don't really run. A nice big bottle of peroxide, a good scrubbing with soap to make sure they're really gone (microscopic skin lice..the 'welts' are an allergic reaction to their 'saliva')Hubbs has been bringing them home from work like crazy from all the grass growth and rainfall. We've been washing clothes like it's going out of fashion.

Leaf cutters. Oh yeah, it's fun for your roses to look like swiss cheese - not.

Leaf spot. I have battled all season, screw the organic I'm playing for keeps. I do avoid the insecticides though. Just fungicide, since it's a little more user friendly.

I've topped off my season with loosing a tree to Io Moth Caterpillars, which not only strip a tree in a week when you get a large colony, but they STING. Moving eating stinging machines. I tried bacterial worm spray but it was too late. They were headed for my roses. I got out my pruning shears and cut over 100 worms about the size of my index finger in half.

I've got the fire ant leprosy look alike feet, which with a barefoot gardeners tan really looks strange. I've discovered stings on your fingers are ooooohhh so much worse than other places, my whole hand swelled up like the michelin man after a sting under my wedding ring. I'm starting to notice the really 'good' ones inspire a somewhat 'arthritic' joint pain under the sting.

I've got more grubs than I know what to do with, and have come to take pleasure from putting them on the hot sidewalk in the sun when I find them. When that doesn't work they get finished off with the shovel.

Building mounds for plants is making me insane. 6-10" down, ROCK!

Yeah, I need to wear some kind of sign too.

My nails are ALWAYS dirty. I clean em, then I'm back out there in the dirt. Can never quite get the grime out of them.

I used to wash my hair every day. But, then I got old. My hair got dry and gray. Then, I had to start "disguising the gray". So, the daily hair washing is out.

Before you go outside, scrape your nails across a bar of soap to get soap under the nails.

It keeps dirt from accumulating quite so deeply, & it makes it easier to clean under your nails later.

Great whines and tips in this thread! I'm going to have to remember the soap trick.

My whine du jour is about all the danged weeds in my garden. I did the newspaper/cardboard/mulch thing and the weeds just thanked me for building them such nice open spaces to invade. With all the heat and rain we get in the summer, it quickly gets out of hand. It goes from suburban garden to primordial jungle in no time. I'm this close to taking a flamethrower to everything, laughing maniacally as I dimly remember a time when I was sane.

This thread is hilariously funny but also chillingly scary.

Maybe I shouldn't have read this thread right before embarking on my first organic Texas garden, hopefully not to be otherwise known as the all-you-can-eat bug buffet. I'm planning two 4' x 8' raised beds and have researched a lot of stuff about what to plant with what or around what to hopefully encourage lots of helpful bugs to munch the plant munching buggies.

btw, orange oil makes a great cleaner and bugs don't like it much so it helps keep those stupid tree bugs out out out. I even clean my window frames and sills with it and it seems to keep them beat back nicely. Now can anyone tell me how to keep the ladybugs from trying to winter in the corners of my ceilings?

Give those ladybugs names and welcome them to your family. :)

I was at our storag3e unit the other day and found a praying mantis there. I scooped him up and brought him home with me
to release on one of my Brugs.

There are certain bugs you want to keep around!

Duh, as much as I miss Wisconsin and moan and groan about gardening and having to water my plants all year... If I was up there, I would spend my winters shoveling snow and constantly scraping snow and ice from my car. Duh, snow and ice is more back breaking than gardening.