Calif_Sue's blog: Pests

Posted on Jun 5, 2013 2:17 PM

I love living here, the scenery, the quiet life and creating this new garden the past 2 years. As much joy as the garden brings me, it also means new challenges that I have to contend with, new pests being the biggest factor.

This morning I went on a gopher patrol, again. Yesterday, as I was cleaning old blooms on a rose, I heard some crunching sounds nearby and looked to my right and about 3 feet away was a gopher, a big one. He had an iris stem in his mouth and was pulling it down in his hole. Looked just like those cartoons where you see a plant sinking down into a hole.

I grabbed a pitchfork and hovered it over the hole and that rascal came about half way out of his hole but I chickened out, I am too squeamish and just couldn't do it! Yelled for hubby to come and do it but he missed. They can be fast! We flooded the tunnel for about 10 minutes with the hose and caved it in with the shovel. Today, a new hole appeared on the opposite side of the same iris. And another new hole a few feet away. Sigh...

Zuzu has kitties to dispatch her gophers, well, not all of them but they do help. (photos below at Zuzu's last year) When my daughter lived here, they had 2 cats that would regularily leave gopher guts and parts on the front porch, kind of became a hazard if you didn't watch your step coming out the door. :-)

See those choppers up close!

These are damaged buds and young leaves on a butterfly bush Butterfly Bush (Buddleja davidii 'Santana') that is infested by a moth larva, most likely the buddleia budworm (Pyramidobela angelarum). This is the larva of a small brown moth that has been troubling butterfly bushes in Southern California and near the California coast for several decades. I read that in most cases a buddleia will grow out of its damage to produce flowers but it is recommended that I prune down and clean it up in the winter, which I didn't do this past year. I will prune the damaged tips (disposing of them in the garbage) so that some side branches develop even though it will mean smaller blooms.

My most irksome small pest is the Rose Curculio or Rose Weevil. Rose weevils damage roses in several ways. First, by making feeding punctures with their long beaks on rose buds, calyx, and peduncle, and secondly, the weevils lay their eggs in the buds and the larvae feed on the petals and receptacle area. If any flowers manage to open, the petals show these awful small holes made by the adults, ruining the bloom. Makes for some awful looking photos and you know I love photographing my blooms close-up, especially roses!

I noticed they tend to prefer certain roses more than others so I am trying to be more diligent now on scouting patrols. I read that regular handpicking of the adult weevils and removal of damaged buds and spent blossoms will prevent continuing damage and will prevent severe populations the following year. They drop readily from plants and feign death when disturbed so I have been using a bowl of soapy water held under the buds when hunting them. I also just read that scouting and handpicking should also be done on other hosts such as raspberries and boysenberries, and blackberries. I have the first and last so will have to check those too. I show one here in the bud but if you Google it, you can see plenty of shots showing more detail.

The spotted cucumber beetle below looks a lot like a green ladybug. However, unlike the ladybug, cucumber beetles are sucking invaders which harm crops and ornamental plants. Their damage is worth a Google search to know what you're up against. They also get the soapy water bowl swim with the weevils.

Earwigs, not new to me, have been my garden enemy for years. No photos, again, Google search them. They love to chew the clematis and daylily blooms. I even find them in the roses and a host of other blooms. When I water the daylilies, tons of them come crawling out. I hand squash as many as I can. (with gloves, but I am not sqeamish about these!) There are a few home made traps that you can make, I found several when doing a search. I do want to try a home made spray recipe, if I remember it right, it was a combination of water, dish soap and cooking oil. You water the daylilies and as they come out, you spray them.