Hedgeapples are the fruit of some big tree, fairly common here in the midwest, fall about this time of year. They're about the size of a medium grapefruit, bumpy, light greenish in color, and they emit an enzyme (?) that insects abhor. To me, they have no odor unless I get my nose right on them, but apparently insects and mice are more "nosey" than I am. Anyway, old-time repellent, but it's free and doesn't have ill effects like poison sprays, and it works for us. Long periods, even. All winter.

BEST TRAP, will cost you few pennies! our little mouse showed up for the first time in November 2015. It was small by then and extremely fast. It's hiding place was behind the washing machine and the furniture in the kitchen. It has stayed with us until grown when I finally caught it in April 2016 (we haven't become friends by then). So these are my attempts that failed before finding the method: -humane traps that close automatically: haha, I don't think the mouse ever noticed them (there were at least 5 and they are annoying as they keep closing through vibration when you walk past). I even added peanut butter, nutella etc, on the wall near the traps to attract. Never a sign that it had been licked off. -a strong rat trap given by my landlord (it doesn't matter what bait I would put (researched them all on these forums and tried them all). It only caught up dust and served nothing. -increased number of rat traps and put them in the right position (90 degrees to wall) or in slightly hidden places which these little friends like - even in boxes with holes as they like to enter them. No sign ever of the mouse having been close to them. -I also added many smaller mice traps (traditional) but during the months it became increasingly clear that they were only another piece of decoration in the house. -I tried the sound repellents (cost me a lot of money). I put one in each room. Haha again! We could often hear the mouse under our bed chewing wood for long periods of time despite the sound repellent being very close... -My method of preference would have been humane in the first place but since nothing happened, I increasingly resorted to more inhumane measures: I added two boxes with poison (one at the very entrance of the hiding place. The mouse never touched it. Guys it was horrible! Nothing worked. Kept reading methods in forums and spending money, money, money… Very frustrating and the little excrements were everywhere. More methods that did not work AT ALL!!!!: -peppermint oil (put loads and loads of them. Seemed to disappear for one day but was soon back and got used to the smell. -pepper: the whole house floor was full of pepper at some point (out of desperation) Softener sheets. Put them everywhere as well. -Glue pads (at least 6-7 at the time of maximum desperation and at location where I thought the mouse had to walk over. I even spend a whole night trying to catch the mouse when I managed to keep it in the living room. One of the worst night in my life since there was no result and I was absolutely tired the next day. I wrote all of this so that you don’t make yourselves too many illusions on the above methods. They may work for some mice, but I just felt at some point I had the smartest mouse ever. So what did work? -Prayer (please keep reading). Honestly, it was one early morning when I had enough of it that I praied intensely and finally caught it a few hours later! What is important is that you observe the patterns and behaviours of your mouse so that you become aware of escape routes/wholes, etc. I noticed in my kitchen that the little fellow once escaped through a small whole in the very corner of the kitchen (which was leading back to its hiding place behind the furniture). Now you also know that the entrance to its hiding place was between the washing machine and the furniture ( a gap of 4cm). Plus of course there is the door to our small kitchen. So 3 points of escape strongly imprinted in the mouse’s brain. What I did is I sealed the small whole in the corner with clay and strong sellotape. I left the gap between wm and furniture open (I needed the little one to come out from somewhere) and put all my glue traps in front of the door to the kitchen. My initial plan was to force the mouse to get through our kitchen door and get stuck on the glue (I still thought the glue traps would work). If it wouldn’t have worked, my hope was at least to catch the mouse as it was unsuccessfully trying to escape through the little whole which was now sealed. Now this happened: my wife had left a simple shopping bag (tied with a knot) with an open pack of balsamic vinegar flavoured crisps inside in the kitchen (hanging at one meter from the ground. The mouse managed during the night to climb up to the bag, make itself a little whole to get into it and start munching at the crisps. This is a very important detail since the mouse makes noise when eating the crisps and is unaware of movements outside (the bag was colored and not seethrough. We were in bed and heard the whole dinner feast going on in the kitchen: time for the patient soldier (me) to walk as silently as possible in the kitchen (I was surprised that the mouse, usually very alert, kept eating despite me making some inadvertent noises. The crisping crasping is so loud next to its ears that it won’t pick up any dangers. Ok, so here I am, I managed to get into the kitchen, position myself before escape route 1 (gap between wm and furniture) and turn the light on (at that point I didn’t know the mouse was inside the bag since we didn’t know where exactly this noise was coming from). I was surprised, as soon as the light was on everything went quite for a moment and I didn’t see the mouse enywhere! I thought it had escaped once again God knows how. But then a quick and noisy movement of the bag (AHA!) The mouse jumped out of the bag in a second, onto the floor, at which point it was at 20-30 cm from my feet and I noticed the millisecond of indecision in his (her?) eyes: it was pointing direction towards the little whole in the corner but as it must have realised earlier, it was now closed, so by the time it looked back to point in a different direction (maybe the door but again there were glue traps there, haha), my big sized foot was already coming down with full force unto it squashing it once and then twice and then trice while with cavely manlyhood and a strong feeling of revenge for all the shit in the house I screamed ‘get this!’ I literally squashed his interiors out with my blows…. By that point you don’t care about being humane anymore. We have a small child and there is a limit to everything and besides I am a man, not an effeminate hippy! I would therefore suggest: buy a few cheap glue traps, get a not-seethrough plastic bag and buy a bag of balsamic vinegar flavoured crisps (yes I think the flavour IS important). Once you know the entrance to the main nest or the main escape route, place the bag even on the floor at a distance from this entrance/escape route. Seal or put glue traps on all evident other escape routes so that if you don’t manage to kill it by stamping on it while it is in the bag, if it manages to come out, it should still feel trapped so that you can put an end to it outside. REMEMBER: position yourself between the entrance/escape route and the bag to give you maximum control. Hope this makes sense. I will definitely use this method always again when/if I encounter a similar issue. Good luck and have a crisp yourself before bidding the little friend goodbye.

I am pretty sure it is Garden Web and not you. It's been acting up for a week or two now. I'm sure they're working on getting it fixed. I haven't bought any Agri-bon 19 in either 4 or 5 years, but that does sound like a good price to me, especially since it includes shipping. My Agri-bon has lasted forever (considering it is so lightweight) and I've been really pleased with it. Piece by piece, though, it is becoming worn out and torn and I'll need to replace it sometime soon. The most recent roll of row cover I purchased (this spring) was an ultra heavy-duty frost blanket and gives at least 10 degrees of protection. I only used it in April and May and I am looking forward to seeing how well it works this fall or winter. It was great in spring, and I just barely ordered it in the nick of time because, you know, we just kept having all those late cold spells and I just kept planting anyway. I was able to almost get everything planted on time despite the cold spells since I had the frost blanket to keep the young plants from freezing. As far as when row cover is needed on the broccoli plants, it just depends. Some years the broccoli pests are pretty much non-existent in late summer and fall and I don't need to use it. Other years, their population is heavy and I do use it. What I have noticed here is that when the summer is very hot and dry, the native brassicas used by those same pests all die in the heat and there aren't any of the moths, butterflies or their caterpillars around in the fall. In cooler, rainier summers, the weed-type brassicas survive and so do the pests. I just plant without row cover and then use it if I start seeing pest damage. Usually, when I do that, I will spray the plants with Bt right before I put the row cover over the plants, so that the Bt will kill any brassica pests on the plants. Otherwise, there is the risk of trapping pests underneath the row cover,which clearly is not desirable. It has not been dry enough here this summer for the weedy brassicas to die, although as I mow, I've been cutting them down in the pastures. Still, if they are alive in our pastures, they are alive in other pastures, so I'll be watching the fall brassicas for pests very carefully after I plant them. I usually don't cover anything until I've first tried it without row covers. Then, if damage appears, I try to get all the pests off the plants first, and then put the row cover over the row of plants. I will carefully check underneath the row covers for several days to be sure I didn't accidentally leave pests under the row covers. Remember too, that many pests spend part of their life cycle in the soil or in garden debris, so it is important when using row cover to rotate a crop to a new area each time you plant it so you aren't putting row cover over plants in soil that may have pests in the soil just waiting to hatch out and infest the plants.This is especially critical with Colorado potato beetles. Grasshoppers are odd ducks. I never really know what they will hit, although in the spring I always see the damage first on catnip and lemon balm. Some years they seem to select beans as their favorite plant, but the next year it might be tomato plants. In my garden they almost never bother cucumber or squash leaves, though, so I often try to hide other plants within a planting of cukes or squash. I don't cover anything when it is first planted unless I have an ongoing pest problem, but am prepared to cover up anything and everything based on wherever the damage appears. Sometimes it appears early and sometimes I can have new plants go weeks or months before something starts devouring them. Summer beans probably are an exception. Grasshoppers find beans irrresistible in July and early August, but often don't bother the plants after about mid-August. I am not sure if that is because they have moved on to something else they like better, or what. In my new back garden, which is surrounded by pasture land on all 4 sides, the only plants they were eating in July was okra leaves at first. Then they went on a big binge eating ornamental sweet potato foliage. Now they've started eating bean foliage, but only the foliage of scarlet runner beans so far, and since I planted those for the enjoyment of the hummingbirds, I am not terribly distressed about that. They haven't bothered the foliage of the other 9 pole bean varieties I'm growing yet...just the scarlet runner beans which seems odd, but that is how they are. Meanwhile in the front garden, they are only eating the foliage of rose mallow, morning glories, moonflower vines and 5 varieties of southern peas,along with the catnip and lemon balm that they seem to find irresistible year-round. I've always got a stack of hoops, a bucket of the U-shaped landscape fabric staples, and row cover in my garden shed ready to go because you never know when a specific pest will hit or what it will hit. Dawn

Synchronicity is working. This morning on Face Book Birders someone posted a video of a hummingbird taking a bath and someone else found out where the shallow opening, recirculating resin pot fountain came from; answer is Kmart. If any readers here are interested in providing shallow-depth bathing for the hummers this year, watch the video below. A shallow bowl with a small pump affixed with a fine nozzle floating inside a larger pot to hold the water will do the trick. The fountain in the video would fit into any garden at just 17" high and weighing 7lbs. I have my answer. Jane Here is a link that might be useful: Youtube- Humming bath