Thanks for the input fruitnut. I think I will actually use sand; its a neat little targeted pistol. At this point I'm willing to sacrifice some fruit to blast these monsters, I just can't spray, because I can't reliably keep my two year old daughter from eating everything she finds that is near ripe in our garden. I can hand pull off my potatoes, but my pomegranate tree is too tall and is in with my chickens; another reason not to spray.

I can just see myself slipping on wet muck or patio and impaling myself on the "punji stakes"...LOL. And having the rabbits stare at me indifferently from not too far away to boot. Not known for my balance or grace! I am sorely tempted to try shish kabob skewers around baby plants though. Wonder which the ER would prefer...wood or metal? Until I started all this gardening stuff this year "because I wanted color and nature and beauty all around me..." I did NOT know all the little considerations one must keep in mind. If and when my bulbs start to come up (deer and rabbit candy) and little WS babies are planted out and I get them safely past their tender phase I'll forget all these "concerns" and have a very happy, content and peaceful look at the natural beauty that might come forth to greet me. If that happens all the other stuff will have been worth it! I did buy 3' high fencing to put out about 2 ft. from the perimeter of a new butterfly garden I started this fall. Only problem I see is that it's got to come down in spring or butterflies aren't going to "see" the attractive colors. Evidently they have very poor eyesight (who knew?) and that's why they're attracted to masses of colors and often bright colors at that. Luckily I've chosen mostly plants that deer supposedly don't like but since they've eaten evergreen bushes for years "don't like" means they'll take whatever's there for the taking when they've gone through what they prefer. Who am I kidding? It's going to be a battle with deer and rabbits. Such is life. Lordy, Lordy, just let me see some blooms...any blooms...next year and it'll all have been worth it...LOL. I'm sure you don't have anything better to be concerned about than my miniscule patch of earth...LOL. World peace? Pifflewort...everyone asks for that. I'm sticking to the small things in my own backyard. When all is said and done a person can only deal with their own backyard anyway and hope others are doing the same...flowers and most other things in life. Happy nature and a peaceful thought to all on this snowy Sunday here in Jersey. I will stay calm about this...I will stay calm about this...I will stay calm about this... LOL.

My goodness what a cute Dog!!! Oh, getting back to trees.. Is there a way you can take a close up of the soil in the pots and maybe a handful in your hand? Most plants usually respond very well to a fresh transplanting after about a month or two....I would be patient and let the sun and a weak feeding of fertilizer do the job...It seems like your soil mix is ok for now, but after a short period of time, watch to see if it collapses and holds more water than it does now..Always think ahead...If it compacts and decomposes into even finer particles than you already have now by winter, you will be asking for problems... I would of made the mix one part of that soil, and 5 parts bark, and one part perlite...This would hold its structure well beyond the winter and not invite "fungus gnats" which can be a pain all winter... Your Ph should be around 6.5 to get the best out of your fertilizer...7.0 may be too high...Use a capful of vinegar in a gallon of water when you water.. I would use Foliage pro or any fertilizer that provides the right ratio and all the minors in it, especially Ma and Ca... Don't be disappointed if some of your leaves reverse to green, since it looks like some are beyond that, but the new growth should be very rewarding too you... Welcome newbie... Mike

If you're seeing cabbage root fly maggots now, I am really surprised because they are cool-season pests, and Oklahoma is hot, hot, hot right now. I've gardened in Texas (80 miles south of where I garden now in Oklahoma) and Oklahoma all my life and never seen a cabbage root fly either in the maggot form or the fly form. Leaf hoppers are everywhere every year. I just ignore them. Aphids are most abundant on plants fed heavily with nitrogen or in new beds heavily enriched with nitrogen. I believe the reason is that extra fertilizer creates extra carbs and the insects find the extra carbs to be especially attractive. Some years the aphids are worse than others. People here tell me it is a bad aphid year, but other than seeing a few on my cabbage and broccoli a month or two ago, I'm not seeing them. Just use a sharp spray of water from the hose to wash them off the back of the leaves. Do this once or twice a day and they'll get tired of it and leave. If they are driving you nuts, you can try spraying the backs of the leaves with either a commercial (not home-made) insecticidal soap or neem oil. I don't do either unless they are incredibly heavy and the water spray doesn't dislodge them. Tiny hoppers. Yes, they most likely are just the younger instars of the grasshoppers. In my garden, the tiny ones show up in March and April and occasionally are still hatching out in May. I put out Semaspore weekly while the hoppers are small and after that I generally do nothing unless the infestation is extremely high, which it is this year. Semaspore and other products with the same active ingredient generally are not effective on the larger instars and it is expensive, so using it after they've gotten bigger than 1/4" to 1/2" would be a waste of money. I'm going to link a document about grasshopper control. The problem with any method of grasshopper control is that new hoppers migrate in every week....if not every day, so no matter what you do, more of them just keep coming. This year I bought EcoBran and am ready to use it. If I use it, it will be the first chemical pesticide I've used in well over a decade, but last year the hoppers destroyed certain crops, and I think they already are present in heavier numbers now than they were at this time last year. They're probably my biggest garden problem in the years when their population peaks. They're not a big problem every year. In our garden, the grasshoppers usually attack these plants in this specific order every year: lemon balm, catnip, catmint, potatoes, mint, basil, beans, peas. In the worst years they then move to to tomatoes and peppers. This year, they're already damaging the tomato and pepper plants, which they usually don't do until July or August here. I ignore root maggots. There's always one here and there, but they aren't present in large enough numbers to cause significant damage. In my garden, there are probably thousands of bugs present on any given day. I don't worry about 99.9% of them. Your garden, just like the world at large, is an ecosystem. You'll always have bugs. The alternative is to nuke your garden with such heavy dosages of chemical pesticides that everything in your garden becomes heavily contaminated with chemicals. I just won't do it. I'd give up my garden before I began spraying broad-spectrum pesticides. There are very few pests in your garden that will do enough damage to become a problem for home gardeners, so I mostly ignore them. With the pests that are troublesome, I prefer to hand-pick and destroy them and their eggs above all other methods because then I'm hurting only the pest insects and not the beneficial insects. The worst thing anyone can do is spray their garden with a broad-spectrum pesticide that wipes out the good bugs that help keep the bag bugs under control. Learn to tolerate a healthy bug population. Then, when your child or grandchild, a niece or nephew, or the child of a friend or neighbor is working on their Insect Collection for school, you'll be the most popular person in town. When our son and our friends' children were at the 'insect collection' age in school, my garden (and our screened-in back porch) were the most popular places in town. A kid could drop by, spend an hour or so, and pick up 25-50 different kinds of insects for their collection. After a while, I could pretty much identify them on sight for the kids and could refer them to the best websites for ID and proper scientific names and such. It can be amazingly difficult for a 'city kid' in an area with heavy pesticide use to find enough insects for their insect collection, but in our yard and garden they found tons. Floating row cover is a godsend. I have 5,000 square feet of it but don't use it for much in terms of excluding insects. It is great for excluding squash pests. Otherwise I mostly use it for freeze/frost protection where it saved my garden a couple of times this year from late freezes. For pests of the brassica family, buy and use Bt 'Kurstaki'. It works only on caterpillar type pests and is not toxic to others. Do be sure you avoid putting it on flowers to which butterflies and moths would be attracted because it has the potential to kill them. Generally for brassica family crops like cabbage loopers and imported cabbage worms, I just handpick them off the plants (wear disposable latex or nitrile gloves if you don't want to touch them) and drop them into a cup or bucket. Then I take them to the chicken coop and toss them in there for the poultry to devour. As an alternative you can drop them into a bowl of soapy water and drown them, or drop them on the ground and squish them with your foot. If you check the backs of the leaves for them and remove them (and their eggs) while they are small, you can eliminate them. However, you have to remain vigilant because there's always more of them coming. This year they haven't been nearly as bad as they were last year. Accept that your garden and yard are an ecosystem and you'll always have insects, both good and bad. Avoid panic when you see them. It is not often that pest populations are high enough to create a significant issue. For each pest that is a problem, use integrated pest management. Use narrow-spectrum solutions aimed at that specific pest. Try to avoid doing anything that will hurt your beneficial insects and they'll help keep the pest insects under control. Just about every year I have one pest or the other that is more of a problem in that specific year than it normally is. Last year it was grasshoppers and Colorado Potato Beetles. This year we had relatively few CPBs but hoppers are bad again this year. This is not unusual as grasshopper populations cycle up and down. Once they peak (last year was, I hope, their peak, although this year could be), their population slowly cycles back down after several years. I just do not get very excited about most insects. Our world is an ecosystem and they are a part of it. When they are doing damage, I do what I can to control them to the best of ability, and then I just don't get too wound up over them above and beyond that. They aren't worth getting upset over, spending vast sums of money to combat (you'll never get rid of them all, and if you did, more would move in) or fretting over. The pests I think worth spending time and money to combat (if their numbers warrant) is very small and would include these: cabbage loopers and cabbage worms Colorado potato beetles squash bugs and squash vine borers grasshoppers blister beetles and leaf-footed bugs I don't get too excited over tomato and tobacco hornworms because they seldom do much damage at all to my plants. I don't worry much about corn earworms or Eurpoean corn borers because they can be cut out of the ears of corn after it is harvested. I ignore leaf miners and flea beetles as they rarely do enough harm to any of my plants to actually hurt them. I let lady bugs take care of the bugs they like to eat. Other beneficial insects eat other pesty things. Birds, frogs, toads, and other reptiles and amphibians take care of lots of the insects. We have a young male kitten who has made it his mission in life to play with and kill every grasshopper he sees. Let's use Colorado Potato Beetles as an example of a pest that may or may not be a problem in a given year. A few showed up this year but not all that many. I handpicked maybe 30 or 40 over a 3-month period. As soon as the Assasin bugs showed up, I stopped handpicking them and let the Assasin bugs take care of them. However, last year they were a huge problem and we had hundreds and hundreds of them. We have 14.5 acres and every one of them is just crawling with bugs. On the approximate 12.5 acres that we don't even mow, are the insects doing significant harm to the plants? Nope. So, why knock myself out worrying about them on the 2 acres where we have our lawn, garden and other landscaping? I don't. I simply try to control the ones that I know from experience will damage a crop enough that I won't get a harvest from it. Most insects have a purpose in life and I try not to interfere with it. For example, I am not at all fond of blister beetles. However, they do eat grasshopper eggs. So, even though my initial inclination is to kill one when I see it eating a tomato plant, I try to just flick it off the plant and leave it alone, hoping it will get hungry for some grasshopper eggs and eat them instead. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Grasshopper Control Page from Planet Natural