My secret BUGG WEAPON...
I have found a way to totally eliminate all rose insect enemies on my roses. Granted, I do not deal with RRD and rose midge (I had some rose midge brought in on a potted rose years ago but eliminated it with a blue mosquito light called DYNATRAP DT-1775). BUT, I did have cutter bees, rose slugs in the zillions, just as many aphids and thrips. Also, the worst was my 20 year old arborvitaes had developed SCALE which ended up destroying over 300 trees in our town in a year... BUT, not my arborvitae.
When I discovered the scale I decided to take action. I called my tree trimmer and he said that they can spray, but it won't be very effective. He also said that sometimes the birds would eat them.
BINGO! I went on Amazon and purchased my incredible BUGG eliminator (my word, not the name of the item itself.) and here is what I bought...
This is a chicken waterer, but the birds love it!!! I purchased this on Amazon, filled it, and within days the sparrows started coming. It was amazing. I could see them fluttering in the Arborvitae chowing down on all the scale in the trees. They came to drink and ate all the scale. What I didn't realize until later was that I no longer had any aphids on the roses!! I used to hang out with a hose, squish and rinse... and then the slugs... UGH, I HATED THEM. GONE. I did not have a single leaf that was damaged this year by anything. I did see the sparrows fluttering around in the roses as well. they never damaged a single bud...Just ate all the bugs!
The reason I purchased this intstead of a bird bath is convenience. Birds climb in a bath and then they poop. That means, rinse the entire bath out daily. yuck. This allows for drinking room, and that's it.
I decided to post this now instead of this summer, because I'll be busy out enjoying my beautiful roses instead of trying to eliminate all of the BUGGS!!
Rebecca
Comments (27)
Rebecca (zone 4)
2 months agolast modified: 2 months ago
If you decide to purchase one of these, make sure you choose the 1.5 waterer and NOT the feeder.I can't guarantee that it will work for you like it did for me, but I'll never be without it in my yard again. Also note, I only fertilize my plants. I do not spray, except for weeds in the lawn once a year.
You can see the clean leaves of my John Davis in the first photo taken mid-June last year. The second photo is more clean leaves from inside my house view, as well as a few of the beautiful green arborvitae.
KEEP IN MIND... THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN OVERNIGHT. All of these bugs have life cycles. I purchased the waterer in May, 2021... So it took an entire year for the cycles to be broken.
Please see post below if you want to see how I clean the waterer... :)
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Comments (20)castro...I'm smiling as I type your name...it's because of "cait's" comments above on Sat., May 23rd...so please forget the LOL! Anyway, I posted again ... and my doors "lean" against things...the one in the pines has a big log behind it that DH & put there (to sit on)... the cactus door leans against his bldg. and I sit it on limestone pcs I put in ground... the white sun door also leans against a tree stump...tree had to be cut down ...and it sits mostly on mulch. So far, no problems & we do get wind here. You could use short steel fence posts and pound a couple in at an angle. Hope that helps answer...have fun with your doors! sunnycal...my garden swing is only about 10' or so from this door...and so I sit there...very peaceful place...but you are right, the door does need some more...maybe a "bolt of lightning!" Does that signify anything in history??? Thanks for all the comments, everyone...enjoy sharing ideas & appreciate all the comebacks! Jeanne S....See MoreUpdate on my cuttings!
Comments (21)oxmyx, yes a very slippery slope indeed. You forgot about the poor fish! LOL. Hooks in thier mouths, people slit thier bellies open and gut them while they are still flopping. Yes we are a big fishing and hunting family here :) I agree that the chickens that are raised in tiny cages where they can barely even stand up, so they can be fattened for market is inhumane. I am sometimes guilty of not knowing whether the ones I buy are free ranged or the prior. I feel bad for the cows too. I used to work in a hospital near a large meat packing plant in Kansas at one time. The details are really disgusting-not only concerning the meat but the workers/health issues and horrible accidents in that place- now that really made me want to become a vegan! But I am not a vegetarian and love a good steak once in a while so I am just as guilty as anyone else who isn't lol. There should be a better way. I think they should be at least raised humanly and when slaughtered for market..at least in a quick way. This reminds me of one of my son's teachers who said, she used to live in the Middle East and when the Prince would visit, the people would line camels up on the side of the road and tie them down and cut their heads off right there, to have a feast/celebration! That is really creepy but funny about the spider burglars...Imagine it getting on the loose and breeding all over the place. We would all be in for a big shock. No telling what species get into the U.S. and how. I think it might be cool to work at customs in somewhere like Miami just to see what all people are smuggling in by ship! There should be a reality show on that LOL! My dd wants a snake! It is a tiny albino looking cornsnake I think. She keeps going down to the pet store to see/hold it. The worker told her she can feed it frozen 'pinkies' (baby mice). I love snakes but this is gonna get bigger lol. Can you feed a huge snake frozen mice when it is huge?...See MoreJ.L. Hudson Seedsman, my secret weapon
Comments (0)This site or paper catalogue is nothing short of amazing! I get a paper catalogue every ten years or so just for reference ( they're free and I want to keep it that way and keep his costs down) then use his web site for up-dates, quick finds. Seeds from all four corners of the world. Vegetables, trees, flowers, tobacco, some tubers. To give an idea, I have been looking for plants of Marrubium Vulgarea ( white horehound), Artemisea Vulgaris (mugwart), Monarda punctata ( spotted bee balm), and Glycyrrhiza Lepidota ( wild American liquorice) for a year now. I have come across a couple of places with one or another in seed, but no place with all. So I said to myself, "Self" if I have to grow from seed, why not try Hudson! Well he has all of them, and they're $2-$2.50 a pack. The packs come with instructions on them. I grew tobacco from him one year, in Maine! Had leaves 4 ft. long on them. Filled 1/4 of my barn attic with hanging leaf from a dozen plant. If nothing else the catalogue as a reference tool (drool, drool, oh I wish I was in zone 8) is worth the effort....See MoreMy dream kitchen is crumbling down around my head.
Comments (19)Thank you all so much! The handholding helps more than I can say. Herbflavor: MA will certainly make the hood a custom size and in fact I am going to tell them to make it 16" high. mtnredux: I decided to leave it at 24" deep. There's a pic on the MA site where a huge hood of the same type I'm ordering is partially under a 24" soffit and it looks kind of neat. So I'm going with the "it will look interesting" idea, not because I don't want to make the GC redo it, but because as you suggested, I slept on it and decided in the am that it would be okay. April_Lorraine, mastiffmom and sioushi: I decided to go with the solid floor for the reasons that 1) once the island is in, we actually won't have a lot of floor space showing, and 2) the range and hood and island will have such big visual impact that I want to give them a nice pale surface to stand out against. I think I have to give up my beloved F&B Pavilion Blue as well (don't think it will go with the hood so much), so I decided that when I have some money again (HAH!) I will redo my foyer with Pavilion Blue and a checkerboard floor. Plus, although he wouldn't have fought me over it, DH slightly preferred the solid floor. willtv: Thank you! It is very helpful to hear from someone taller with even less space between the hood and cooktop that you don't bang your head. And I'm ordinarily not much of a drinker but I'm having a glass of wine right now and boy, is that some good stuff. V. relaxing. Sayde: I know 31" is within the normal range but it just seems so low to me that it bothers me! I'm sure it will be fine. blfenton: Hahaha! One of our cats does behave that way. The other one always has this slight startled deer-in-the-headlights expression. I guess I looked more like her at the time. rosieo: I know, I know...and I really do count my blessings every day and try to keep this in perspective (like, there are people with nothing to eat and I'm worried about this stupid sofft depth?!?). Normally I'm pretty unflappable but this was kind of a cumulative effect thing that got to me. I've compromised on lots of little details and over time it has a way of building up such that I feel that what I had planned and designed won't be anything like what I end up with. But truthfully you're right: It is, after all, just a kitchen. muskokascp: I think I was just exhausted. You're right...one thing at a time. It's tough, though, when you consider changing one major element and you have to think carefully through how that change would effect everything else. It's tiring. johnliu: No, I really haven't made that many changes. This was after we were waffling on the sink being next to the wall, decided to switch it with the DW, and I was so miserable over the thought of it all night that I switched it back in the morning. This GC has remodeled two baths for me plus installed a completely new one and painted my house, and for all those jobs combined, I made exactly ONE change (to replace a window molding that didn't match others in the adjacent rooms). This was just bad timing. SusieQusie60: Hmmm...I don't seem to be able to make decisions piecemeal. I am compelled to consider the whole package. Not sure if it's because I'm a graphic designer and tend to think in terms of "overall packaging" but I have to visualize the entire kitchen and how everything works together. Which unfortunately makes me terribly indecisive! I'm probably my GC's worst nightmare, and here I think I'm so easy to work with. *g* katkatf: Thank you! That helped a lot. I've decided this is like childbirth: It sucks while you're going through it but there's no other way to get there. Although hmmmm...I didn't have any drugs when I had a homebirth. I wonder if I could get my epidural now. aliris: Thank you, that was a great post! It's good to know I can both feel incredibly blessed and lucky and at the same time occasionally pull my spoiled princess act (as long as I don't do it too often). desertsteph: No, not really. I had meant to tell him earlier and just didn't. Lesson learned. I must say that he is a GREAT GC in terms of quality and competence and reliability. His crew has been with him for a long time and they're great too. It's just that most of the kitchens he does--and he's built some very high-end homes--are the same generic thing over and over. So he thinks I'm a whackjob when I propose some new thing he's never done before. Like I told him 15 years ago in another house that I wanted a wood floor in my kitchen and he said that NO ONE does wood floors. I also told him about radiant underfloor heating and he looked at me like I was from another planet. Fast-forward a few years and he's telling me that wood floors are wonderful in kitchens, or if I do tile, I should consider radiant underfloor heating. :-) He doesn't know about my secret weapon, the GW Kitchen Forum! I told him that while he thinks I'm crazy and always wanting to do something he's never done before, look at how much he's learning. (Currently he's telling me that NO ONE does marble countertops. Heh.) So thank you so much, everyone. All the electrical went in today and we're moving along. I'll just keep taking deep breaths and repeating "It's just a kitchen. IT'S JUST A KITCHEN."...See MoreRebecca (zone 4)
2 months agoRebecca (zone 4)
2 months agoRebecca (zone 4)
2 months agoRosecanadian - I didn't have to hunt for this answer, and I can't take the credit... I ask the Lord about these things.
When the idea popped into my head it was natural for me to know how to do it. I grew up on a homesteaded farm that had always been in our family, in a 100 year old farm house. We had a porch on the house shown in this photo of me and my little red hen. Each year in early Spring, we laid paper down across part of the floor with a board up on the side to keep the chicken in and we raised baby chicks there until they were big enough to move outside to the chicken coop with a heat lamp. I spend endless hours watching them, picking them up, and rubbing their fuzzy bodies across my face to feel their unbelievable softness. During that time I had the fun of watching them eat and drink. As a result, I knew what to do. I can't tell you how much fun I had on that old farm. The photo below is me in about 1953.
Rebecca
Rebecca (zone 4)
2 months agoRebecca (zone 4)
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2 months agoRebecca (zone 4)
2 months ago
toolbelt68
2 months agoRebecca, I've got thousands of pictures so searching for the exact one is NOT going to happen.. lol
However, I did find a few that comes close.... enjoy
These are waiting their turn.....
This one....well
Rebecca (zone 4) thanked toolbelt68Rebecca (zone 4)
2 months ago
rosesmi5a