pests

lots of things will eat your plant other than you,
and often it is not that big of a deal,
but sometimes it can ruin everything,

it is often a race if a plant can get big enough to deal with bugs eating them in time for the bugs not to kill them entirely

here is a squash leaf that was eaten by insects

thankfully the plant was big enough and the insects only went after the one leaf and not all of them,
so the plant is doing well,
but 35 or so other squash plants were leveled to the ground before they can get big enough to take it,

I can't seem to grow peanuts here at all as they are all leveled to the ground before they get even one leaf out.
(picture of just dirt omitted)

birds will eat just as much,
but easy to net them out.

the gofers will take out many plants a day,
I planted 800 onions in spring,
I just counted and about 150 were taken by gofers already,
and 85 have gone to seed early,
and with the ones that are just not growing well I am down to about 500,
but it is still early in the season,
and I have seen 6 onions a day vanish to the gofers, and this is when I was setting traps 3 times a day for them.
I might not get any to harvest time..


I don't mind feeding the wild life,
but they will snack on one plant for a day worth of food and that plant would likely have produced hundreds of pounds of food if they had ate the harvested food at the end.
.
I use to think that I could just plant way more than I need,
but I have found out that the gofers reproduce fast enough to outstrip any plant based growing food supply.

I tried sound repellents, and they just seemed to attract them more...
leaving a dish of water out for them and other tricks I have seen did no good at all.

so I am left with trapping them or I have no food,
there are a few tricks to getting the gofer traps to work well:
first- never touch the traps as they will smell humans and just back fill the area and will go some other direction.
second- attack a chain (or wire) to your trap and steak it down when you set them,
often a cat will find the trap after it has something in it, and they will drag the trap with the snack in it and eat it under a tree or somewhere else that you will never see the trap again.

here is a squash plant that is wilted from having very little roots left

and all the water out there will not fix it,
here is the plant right next to it

 that told me to go looking for a gofer,

I found it's hole with a shovel,
and set traps each direction,
you want to clear out the hole enough so the gofer can fit in the hole with the trap,
and make sure the trap can't be pushed back out of the hole,
here is how I do it (the trap should likely be further in the hole, but can't get a picture that way)

here is a set of traps I set at the runner beans

then so they can't see the trap (often they run if they can see the trap )
then I cover the entire area with a paper bag that has a weight on it,

 make sure to check your traps 2 times a day, or at least once a day.
you can never be sure what will get caught in one,
so go make sure you don't have your favorite cat stuck out there with no water or a stuck toad in one,
it is a critical thing to do,
using traps is bad enough, so make sure you are not causing any more pain than needed.

as far as how to deal with the insects,
planting things near each other that distract the bugs or confuse them often does work,
and apparently I need to learn companion planting now,

and don't forget to feed the gofers to your cats,
cats eat them fast and demand more from me...

now time to get lunch