The Resident Toad

While picking okra something caught my eye.  It was moving and startled me at first, but then I looked closer.  It was perhaps the biggest toad I had ever seen.  It was so fat and plump it reminded me of myself after a big Thanksgiving meal.

Toads are a gardener's friend.  They devour insects, slugs and snails.  I read that they can eat up to 10,000 garden pests in a single summer.  By examining this guy's girth, I would say he is well on his way to eating that many or more!  I hope he keeps at it.  There's lots of stuff for him to eat in our garden.

They like moist environments and plenty of cover and the garden certainly has exactly that habitat right now.  I am very thankful for Mr. Toad taking up residence in our garden.  I thought that I would pick him up, thank him, and ask him to invite some more of his toad family to reside in our garden.

He thanked me right back and promptly pee'd all over my hand.  I guess I had that coming!  I immediately thought of the old tale that toads will give you warts.  I set Mr. Toad back down in the garden, watched him clumsily hop away and then I went inside and washed by hands real good.  Actually, toads cannot give you warts.  Warts are caused by a human virus and cannot be transmitted by toads.  Old fellow got a bad reputation.  I did learn that the bumps behind a toad's ears are glands that emit a poison that repel its predators and can irritate human skin.

There's good and bad with everything, I guess.  I think in Mr. Toad's case, the good outweighs the bad.  Long live Mr. Toad (and his friends) that have made Our Maker's Acres Family Farm garden their home.  Bon Appetit, fat toad!

A Bug's Life

A few days ago, Tricia and I poured a cup of coffee and walked around the yard. Sometimes we move so fast doing all sorts of things, that we just enjoy slowing down and taking the time to observe our surroundings.  Sometimes some of the most interesting things are right under our noses, but we don't take the time to observe and take it all in.

As we were walking, I happened to look up toward the eaves on the northern side of our home and something caught my eye.  It looked like a swarm of bees that was "bearding" and had attached itself to the side of the house.  Wow, are we being taken over by more bees?  I like our one colony, but I don't want more...

What is this?

As I looked closer, I noticed that whatever it was, it wasn't only on our roof, but on the side of the house as well.  And it's not bees.

It's a bug

As I looked a little closer, I saw exactly what they were: they are Leaf Footed Bugs and there are hundreds and hundreds of them.  In the close-up below, you can see why they are called leaf-footed bugs.  They have little thing on their back legs that looks like a leaf.  Sort of cool looking, but if you grow tomatoes or citrus, you know that these things are wretched creatures.

Leaf footed bug

Like a plague, they arrive and feed on your crops.  They are related to stink bugs and have a piercing mechanism on their mouth that allows them to pierce vegetables and fruits and suck the juice out of them. Their natural predators are birds, spiders and assassin bugs. 

I learned that the reason that they are piled up like this is that in the fall they bunch up in the piles you see above and below to overwinter.  Those groups are called aggregations, but I think I'll call them aggravations.  If they are still there this evening, I'm going to kill them all so they won't be around to inflict pain on my tomatoes and citrus in the spring.

RIP Leaf footed bugs

All these bugs might make you think that we have plagues of insects in Biblical proportions that sweep through and devour our crops, but believe it or not, there are some good, beneficial insects around our place.  Take for instance this fellow:

Let us prey!

A Praying Mantis!  He was on the bricks right below the leaf footed bugs.  And there was another out on the gate post going into the pasture.  They are such curious looking bugs!

The Praying Mantis

They don't actually pray (that I know of).  They actually prey on other insects like mosquitoes, flies, crickets, and moths.  The link I posted above says that they have been known to kill lizards, small mammals and hummingbirds.  Wow!  That would be something to see!

While I want to reduce the population of leaf-footed bugs, I'd certainly like to see the Praying Mantis population increase substantially.  We need more good bugs around the place.  We don't use pesticides so having a bunch of praying mantis' around would be a good thing.  If you look in the background of the picture above, you can see the green of the fall garden.  Perhaps this Praying Mantis hanging out on the gatepost is letting me know that he's raising a brood of beneficial insects to help me control the bad insects.  We'll see...

Let's Start This Thing Over

He gave also their crops to the grasshopper And the product of their labor to the locust.  Psalm 78:46

Ever since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, things have been tough in the garden.  Man was going to have to toil by the sweat of his brow to have the soil yield food to eat.  There would be briers and thorns and weeds and inclement weather and pests of all sort.  Our garden cannot even be remotely compared to the Garden of Eden.  Most of the time, it is more aptly named, The Garden of Weedin'.  Today's post is about insects, though, and how sometimes things just don't work and you have to start again from scratch.

This year I was scanning the Internet for different ideas for the Fall/Winter Garden and I stumbled upon a website specifically for Louisiana that had a monthly planting guide.  I've traditionally planted all the seeds for my fall crops directly in the ground in early - mid September.  This publication suggested planting the seeds in seed pots in late July - early August and then you'd transplant the young plants into the garden.  The idea is that you'd get a jump on the Fall/Winter crop growing season.

It sounded like a great idea.  We would be eating broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels Sprouts earlier.  I planted my seeds, watered them and they grew.  They got a little 'leggy' seeking the sun, because I kept them on the patio out of the blistering heat.  But that's okay.  I would simply move them into the garden and watch them continue to grow and we'd be eating fresh homegrown vegetables a little earlier this year!

Fall Seedlings ready to be transplanted

Or so I thought.  The very next day I brought my hoe out to the garden and walked around back to the patio to begin carrying the trays of seedlings.  I was surprised to see that some sort of insect discovered my plants  and at almost every leaf off of them!  Argghhh!!  Oh well.  I tried a new idea and it just didn't work.





Next year, if I try this again, I'll be ready with some sort of organic pest control spray like Neem Oil or soapy water to try to combat the bugs.  It is just doggone hard to try to grow anything in the hot summer months of July and August.  To be safer, I may just stick with my old tried and true plan of planting seeds directly into the garden soil in September.

Planting early to 'get a jump' on the Fall crops seemed to only succeed in giving the insects an opportunity to 'jump' on my Fall Crops.  Planting the seeds a few weeks later allows the heat and the insect pressure to subside.  But that is what gardening (and much of life) is all about - trying new things, sticking with what works and learning from mistakes.  In the next couple of days, I'll show you how we started again from scratch.