Tools, wonderful tools

The talks at my organic gardening class today were fantastic.

The first one was on pests of all ilks. Now I'm even more interested in learning about aphids and other garden critters.

The second talk was from the founder of Red Pig Tools which was awesome. He searches out old tools and when he finds something that works that can't be purchased he makes it himself in his forge. I learned that I have been double digging all wrong -- way too much work the way I do it.

The role of raccoons?

While planing for life in the backyard section I keep encountering questions of dealing with raccoons (Procyon lotor). There is something unspeakably cool about raccoons -- crafty, intelligent, versatile, fastidious, silent, lurkers. I don't like thinking of them as enemies. But I also don't want them nabbing my hens and such.

Their diet consists of about 40% invertebrates, 33% plant foods, and 27% vertebrates -- eating invertebrates is good, usually. Since raccoons are able to increase their rate of reproduction up to a certain limit, extensive hunting often does not solve problems with raccoon populations. Older males also claim larger home ranges than younger ones, resulting in a lower population density. The costs of large-scale measures to eradicate raccoons from a given area for a certain time are usually many times higher than the costs of the damage done by the raccoons.

In an enlightened world, what then is the place of a raccoon in the urban environment?

I need some froghopper eating spiders

The other day I noticed spittlebugs on my rosemary.

Spittlebug eggs are laid in late summer and are left to over winter on plant debris. The eggs will hatch in early spring and go through five Instars, or stages, before becoming adults. When the nymphs originally hatch in early spring, they will attach themselves to a plant and begin feeding. They are a wingless, green creature at this point and are almost invisible inside the spittle. [about.com]

I had tried just hitting the spittle with a blast of water from my spray bottle,

but they just came back a day or two later. So today I took a closer look and spotted the little light green nymphs after blasting away their protective foam. Then I was able to hand pick them.

Now I need to find some spiders to feed them to. Maybe they'll develop a taste for froghoppers and help me out.

Found a neat little summary complete with an example on a rosemary plant at the UC Davis IPM site.