Mothballs

It's getting to be time to put away your winter clothes for the year -- thank goodness! But don't pack them away with mothballs. Those things are literally poison, which is helpful in keeping moths at bay but not so good for your health.

An alternative? Cedar chips or blocks. You can find them at hardware stores (like Lowes), big box retailers (like Wal-Mart), and bed/bath specialty stores (like Bed, Bath & Beyond). They're inexpensive and much better for you than moth balls!

An added bonus: you can refresh cedar blocks and chips with cedar oil and/or sanding. This will keep your cedar investment working for years to come!

Sunscreen and Bug Repellent

Fall weather is on its way, and many of us will be spending more time in the lovely autumn weather soon. Keeping that in mind, you might be in the market for some sunscreen and/or bug repellent.

Sunscreen:
Primarily, you'll want to look for a sunscreen that uses physical barriers from the sun instead of chemical ones. And, as always, the fewer ingredients you can't pronounced/don't have a clue what they are, the better.

Bug Repellent:
We all know this by now, but be sure to stay away from DEET. And the unknown chemical thing again. Essential oils are a great substitute.

For example, catnip oil is reported to be an excellent option -- the order of 10 times more effective than DEET. Look for it in your store-bought repellents (often as "nepetalactone"), or make your own. Try mixing 6 drops of catnip oil in 3 oz of water.

Check out Low Impact Living's article Safe Sunscreen and Bug Repellents for more details about both sunscreen and bug repellent. She does an excellent job linking to suggested products, too. Grist's article Swat Team also has good information about DEET-free bug repellents, including her personal experiences with different brands through experimentation.

Indoor Gardening update

Indoor growing can be kind of tricky.

First, pests. We had some problems with gnats, but we solved those by getting some poison- and chemical-free sticky traps from Lowes. Mealy bugs were more of a pain in the butt. Blasted things didn't attack any of our vegetable plants, but they loved an indoor ivy plant. Showering them a couple of times with Orange Guard seemed to do the trick though. Still kinda grossed me out.

A second issue is making things grow. Luckily, the broccoli seems to be thriving just fine in our West window and especially in the South-facing ones. Lettuce didn't make it. And zucchini, while it lasted longer than the lettuce indoors, finally decided it wasn't getting enough light.

Our third major issue surrounded remembering to water. It's currently the rainy season here in Florida, so we rarely have to water our outdoor vegetables. However, that gets Ben, the family water-er, out of the habit of watering regularly.

Assuming you can remember to water your plants, how should you go about doing so?

The best way to water indoor plants is to begin by soaking the soil thoroughly. You want water to come back out of the hole in the bottom of the pot. Make sure you pour this water away instead of onto another plant, as it is laden with the excess salts your plant is trying to get rid of. Also, do not let this excess water just sit in the pot plate, as this could lead to wet roots and root rot.

Right after you soak your soil, pick up your pot and feel how heavy it is. You don't want to water again until the weight is down to about half of what it is fully saturated. This will probably be two or three days later. But check your pots daily because some indoor plants dry out quickly due to their small pots and need to be watered rather frequently. Each subsequent time you water, you want to repeat this saturation-then-wait process.

Image from http://www.orangeguard.com/webart/spraybottle.jpg

Moles

In the sandy soils of Florida and many other coastal areas, moles can be a big annoyance. They love the loose soil of my flower beds, frequently weaving their intricate web of tunnels for meter after meter. But when they decided to check out my vegetable garden and knocked over one of my squash plants, moles moved from my "annoyance" category to "threat." While we will by no means have enough vegetable growth to meet our dietary needs this year, we do hope that eventually our garden will be able to feed us a large amount of our daily food.

Of course, poisons were not an option for us in our quest for mole control. At the local home improvement store, however, we found a few different mole repelling poles. These work by sending vibrations through the soil that really annoy the moles and make digging in the area unpleasant for them. Easy to install, the mole repellers are simply pushed down into the dirt in the center of the area you want to be mole-free. The poles then send out pulses every few seconds that vibrate the ground around it, effecting up to 7,500 square feet. At Lowes, they have solar powered models for $20 each.

So far, so good.

Image from http://images.aandhmarketing.com/pics/P3International/p7909.jpg

Ants

Ants. My sworn enemy. Specifically, fire ants. Evil little things that apparently like to build mounds wherever I'll want to stand.

In spring, when I first started my garden, the war began. I gardened, and they bit my hands. Ten white, swollen welts at a time. So I gardened with gloves, and they bit my feet. Darn sandals. I bought Wellies that come up to my knees. So I gardened with gloves and Wellies, and, I swear to god, they bit me in the butt. No more wearing shorts while working the land, huh?

As you can see, this war is justified.

We wanted to control these blasted fire ants, but we didn't want to use harmful chemicals, especially next to the vegetable garden. A little poking around online and you know what we found? Baking soda is the ant control you've been looking for! Just pour some of it all over the mound, and, in a day, all the ants will be in the big ant farm in the sky (or hopefully down below!). Sometimes it takes a second application if the mound is particularly huge, which Southern ant piles can often be.

It's worked quickly and effectively for us every time. If you are ever cursed with these creatures, give it a try!

Photo from http://entomology.lsu.edu/faculty/hooper_files/RedImportedFireAnt.jpg

Garden in Central Florida

Gardening in Central Florida, we have some unique challenges in our experimentation with the earth. These are some of the elements we will be learning to work with:

First, our soil is very sandy, which makes it extremely easy to work with, but it lacks rich organic matter and drains water quickly.

Secondly, our seasons in no way resemble those described in gardening books. We sort of have two seasons: "decent" (October through April) and "extremely hot" (May through September). Add to this the fact that we have a "wet season" (June through September) and a "dry spell" (April and May), and you see our confusion when it comes to ordinary "spring," "summer," or "fall" crop divisions.

Likewise, and thirdly, our climate thus requires modifications to many recommended gardening methods. For example, we must ignore the most often recommended watering regiment (water deeply but not often), since the heat dries out the sand quickly.

Then, of course, comes the humidity, which makes many Southern gardens more susceptible to plant diseases. And with no winter, we have no respite of pests either.