Question from Tressa:
I love your month by month gardening book and have read it almost cover to cover.

My problem is armies (literally of snails) I live in Claremont, Ca. (new Pomona not San Diego) in the foothills and have snail attracting ground covers which I can’t easily remove. I have tried every organic method – my favorite was trays of beer which everything but the snails liked. I can pick buckets of snails every time I water. Sluggo works somewhat, but everything is eaten up. the only thing that really works is deadline or something other strong poison which I don’t want to use. do you have any suggestions?

Answer from Pat:
I am very familiar with Claremont, California and wonder if you live in Padua Hills? I graduated from Scripps College after four memorable years and a great college experience. (I was an English and Art Major.) My husband whom I married on graduation day, and I later lived in Claremont for a couple of years, during which I returned to Scripps as the Teaching Assistant in Freshman Humanities. (The History, Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture of the Ancient World, a double-credit course.)

I agree that organic controls for snails are not totally successful, whereas Deadline is highly successful, but I hasten to say I’m with you. I don’t use it any more. A few years ago before I returned to my roots and became so totally organic as I am today, I used to put one drop of Deadline on the base of every cymbidium flower spike as soon as it had grown tall, just before the buds opened. (Cymbidium blooms are a magnet for snails.) Also I climbed around in my large drifts of clivia (Clivia miniata) and put one drop of Deadline at the base of every bloom stem before the flowers opened. Dogs and cats did not come into contact with the Deadline since it was deep within the leaves, not in a place frequented by animals, but by doing this once every year in late February or early March, my snail problem was largely solved for the entire year. Since snails love cymbidium and clivia blooms better than almost any other plant, they acted like a traps, attracting snails from the entire garden. Deadline cut them off at the pass. Getting them early is what counts.

People who have an orange grove have an opportunity to use the trees as an organic trap. In areas of seasonal frosts every year, such as where you live, the snails on orange trees all congregate in winter in the center of the tree. If you have an orange tree yourself, just take a look in the crotches of the branches in the middle of the tree in December or January. This is where the snails go to hibernate, protected from freezing by the foliage surrounding them and by each others shells. Sometimes there will be fifty or a hundred snails or more all congregated together in the center of the tree. It is not a pleasant or easy job, but go in there wearing gloves and carrying a large sack, pull them off the tree, bag them, smash them, and send them to the dump and snail problems on orange trees are done for the year.

I do, however, have another suggestion of an organic control that really works, but I am not sure if you are going to like it, and that is ducks. Ducks eat slugs and snails by the thousands and then you would collect the eggs. (I find the eggs too strong for my taste, however.) But ducks are messy and they do want a bit of a pond to splash around in. Slightly less good as slug and snail control but almost equal to ducks at eating slugs and snails, and a lot less messy and noisy, are chickens. These days you can even purchase an inexpensive, ready-made, moveable chicken coop designed for moving around on a lawn, but why not on ground cover? Or make your own enclosure out of chicken wire. You would just move it around on your ground cover and the chickens would clean up the snails and give you simply delicious, nutritious eggs in return. If your ground cover is inside a fenced yard you let the chickens run free.

People these days are learning that chickens make very nice family pets. Children love them but so do grownups. When you are home you can let them out and they gladly clean up all the pests in the garden and give you delicious eggs to eat yourself and share with friends. Many good types are appropriate for family use. Rock Cornish hens are among the most popular right now but there are some other incredibly beautiful ones besides these and you can have lovely green and blue eggs from Araucana chickens if you want. If you introduce the chickens as chicks and keep them penned at first, smart dogs and cats will learn they are part of your pack. (Or at least they should. Only a very dumb dog won’t learn this, and unfortunately years ago I owned such a dog and lived on a farm so that dog had to go.) Also the coops with tops on them can protect your chickens during the daytime from hawks and such that might attack if you aren’t home. At night lock them into a compact but stoutly made chicken house so they are safe from foxes and coyotes. Chickens come home by themselves in the evening, since they can’t see at night. Kids love them and you will too.

Keeping a few hens is fun and is all the rage right now among organic gardeners and with people who believe in eating healthy homegrown food. There are many books on keeping a few back-yard chickens and there’s loads of free and helpful information on the internet. You might even find helpful club in your area of chicken owners.

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2. Snails
3. Tree dahlia (Dahlia imperialis) with leaf miners

Question from Jonnie:

Answer from Pat:
Without seeing your crape myrtle (Lagestroemia indica) or a photo of the bark I cannot tell if there is anything wrong with it. However, though it may look a bit messy now, most likely nothing is amiss. People plant crape myrtles not only for their spectacular summer flowers but also for their interesting mottled gray, taupe, pink and fawn bark. Like sycamores, the bark of crape myrtle does not stretch or become furrowed as most tree bark does. Instead, as the tree grows its bark peels off in patches, revealing the new pink bark beneath. This mottled look is actually one of this tree’s most interesting characteristics.
With this tree you get a triple whammy: spectacular fall flowers, fall leaf color, and handsome bark that is especially
attractive in winter after leaves fall.

Crape myrtles grow best in interior climate zones where summers are hot and dry. They do not like water-logged
soil and perform best in well-drained soil with deep but infrequent irrigation, and light pruning in late winter or early spring to encourage new growth for summer bloom. Crape myrtle blooms on new wood. Letting the tree go slightly dry in late summer and withholding summer fertilizer will increase the display of blossoms in late summer and early fall. It is not a good idea to plant this tree in a lawn.

Crape myrtles are not good choices for Sunset Zone 24 where coastal fog and June Gloom blankets gardens in moist air. In such conditions crape myrtles tend to succumb to mildew. Mildew doesn’t affect the trunk. It affects the leaves and sometimes also the flowers. The general guidance for planting all trees is to plant them straight into unamended native soil, since the tree will eventually have to grow there anyway. That said, crape myrtles thrive best in soil that is well drained. Gardeners who plant them in heavy clay soil would be wise to provide a raised bed.

Such a bed does not need to be very high. Even four inches will save the crown of the tree from becoming water-logged. Fill the raised bed with good quality top soil mixed with nutrients and well-composted organic matter, but before doing so apply gypsum liberally to the native soil. Next dig some of your fill into the hard ground below, to create a marriage of soils instead of a hard line between the two. Then dig the planting hole straight through the top soil and mixed soil into the native soil beneath. Add more gypsum in the bottom of the hole and some slow release organic fertilizer in the bottom of the planting hole. Then plant the tree and refill the hole. Make a watering basin and keep the roots well watered until established then gradually lengthen out the times between irrigations.

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2. Fruit Drop From Peach Trees
3. Planting California Native Plants

Question from Tressa:

Answer from Pat:
Thanks for this excellent comment on snails and for your kind comment on my blog. Yes, decollate snails really do work. Sometimes it takes a few years for them to get going, but once they do, our large (edible-escargot-type) snails are gone. The decollate snails only eat the babies so it takes a while for the large adult snails to die off. I’m glad you reminded me of how effective they can be since I think I will spread some this winter into ground covers and succulents. The only negative thing about decollate snails is that they eat small seedlings so if one likes to plant wildflowers or vegetables from seeds this can be a nuisance.

I have a succulent bank flanking my drive and this would be a good place for me to spread decollate snails since they won’t stray from it. Once the rains start, the snails get going munching on leaves and ruining the bank’s appearance. A couple of years ago I asked a volunteer who was helping me to spread Sluggo on that bank, a difficult task for me. My volunteer helper said that was one job she couldn’t do because she couldn’t kill anything, even a snail. I told her that life on a farm had prevented me from having similar feelings. But later that day and unbeknown to me she took pity on me and picked up all the snails she could find, bagged them in a brown paper bag, and put them into her truck, meaning to release them somewhere else on her way home. Then she promptly forgot them. A day or two went by and the snails got out and climbed all over inside the truck. They got under the roof, dashboard, and seats, onto the  windows and inside the windshield, and everywhere else. It was a super hot day, and the snails were trapped inside a closed hot truck. Of course they died. My friend the volunteer didn’t tell my for a year what had happened or how long it took her to get the horrendous smell of dead fish out of her truck!

Related posts:

1. Baby snails killing our Blue Star Creeper
2. Organic Snail Control

Question from Bonnie:

Answer from Pat:
Too bad about the veggie garden. Ground squirrels eat the tops off plants, such as cole crops. Do you have ground squirrels? Not likely to be crows. They go more for grain and pine nuts. Possum is possible but not too likely… but rabbits? Yes, big time! Way to tell is this: If it is a rabbit, they leave jagged-edge teeth marks. If it is a rat they leave a slice downwards from left to right or right to left on one side as if cut straight through at an angle by a gardener with a sharp pair of secateurs. If it is a ground squirrel, they chomp off the top in a straight line through the stem (not at an angle) but sometimes (though not always) they leave a leaf behind, hanging by a thread or lying on the ground. All will come back night after night. Ground squirrels take more sorts of things, beginning with favorite items and after that they move on and take the less favorite also. Rats stick with well-favored plants. A particular rat will get a liking for one plant and then go around the garden eating just that one thing. One can always tell it’s a rat by the precise angle of the clean cut.

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1. Raccoons in the Vegetable Garden
2. Ground Squirrels Undermining Bank
3. New Solution to Animal Pest Problems

Question for Mary:

Answer from Pat:
Cathedral plant (Euphorbia trigona) grows extremely well as a houseplant, but needs occasional diluted fertilizing during the growing months, in addition to well-drained soil, and adequate light with no direct sun. I have seen several huge ones growing indoors. Due to this euphorbia’s multi “trunks” getting rid of a persistent pest such as thrips without spraying is more than a challenge, it’s nigh impossible. Luckily, Spinosad will control thrips. This is an OMNI-registered product and so it is safe to use indoors and since there are no bees indoors it can’t hurt anything. Nonetheless, one should take care to protect your lungs and not to breath in the product while spraying. (Covering a large plant with a big shopping bag or large trash bag while spraying can help accomplish this.) Also clean up and replace the the top 1/4 of the soil or rock in the pot. You may need to spray more than once. Out in the garden thrips are best controlled by beneficial insects but I can just imagine what it would be like to release lady bugs inside the house. A noble idea with tragi/comedy results.

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1. Clover Attracts Ladybugs
2. Organic fertilizers for indoor plants
3. Native Grasses & Succulents Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon

Question from Kathy:

Answer from Pat:
Homemade repellants won’t solve your problem. The first thing to do is to make an intelligent diagnosis. If you wear glasses for reading you will need them for this job.

The way to diagnose what’s eating your plants is to go out at night, after dark—about 9:00 p.m. at this time of year (fall) with a flash light and a magnifying glass in addition to your glasses. Take along a kitchen bucket with some water in it. Look closely at the leaves and you will find the culprit. If it is small caterpillars, these are budworms. If large green caterpillars, these are loopers. Either way, the solution is the same. Hand pick and then spray the next day with Spinosad or BT. (Both are organic products even though Spinosad kills bees but it won’t harm bees if you use it in a wise and restricted manner only in places, like leaves where bees won’t go. BT works against caterpillars and does not harm bees, but you need to spray more often. You also need a fresh bottle of BT dated for this year, not an old bottle since it’s Bacillus thuringiensis, a live organism that kills caterpillars and nothing else. It does not last forever. Spinosad lasts longer on the plant and in the environment, and is more effective than BT but please be very very careful not to spray it on geranium flowers if you ever see bees visiting the flowers. (Usually bees don’t visit geraniums.) Remember, Spinosad kills bees if the spray is where they visit and even if it is dry on pollen they will carry it back to their hives and it makes baby bees sick and some will die. Please don’t cause this to happen.

There is something else that might be eating your geraniums. First, yes of course it might be grasshoppers or locusts. But you mentioned brown insects that look like grasshoppers. We will get to those in a minute. First green grasshoppers or locusts. You can catch these and squish them quickly, but you need to be exceedingly quick. I am often quite a sketch myself trying to catch these speedy creatures. Of course, if you are into this sort of thing you could dip them in batter and fry them! (GRIN.)Yes, they are edible, a fine source of protein, eaten by Africans, reputed to be crunchy and delicious, though I have never tried them myself and sometimes sold, like ants, coated in chocolate or flavored with hot pepper. You most likely would see locusts in daylight, however, and might need a net to catch them. Diatomaceous earth sprinkled onto leaves kills them but doesn’t look good on plants.

Another worse possibility is that you have an infestation of dread walking sticks. These are the brown things you might have seen. The good news is they are very easy to catch at night. These nocturnal things called Indian walking sticks began as pets and escaped into our gardens where they have settled down and are quite happy. They live in the ground in leaf litter and emerge at night to decimate your plants. They look exactly like slowly walking pieces of twig either green or brown. Pick them off carefully or they will drop to the ground. Drop them in that bucket of water you brought with you to drown them in. I think it’s kinder to squish them first. Give them a quick death if you can but no need to use poisons. Put a layer of dry earthworm castings on the ground beneath the plant to kill the rest of them as they emerge from the ground. Keep on going out at night each evening and getting rid of them until they are all gone. Many friends of mine have gotten rid of infestations this way, just keeping at it. You may have to go out at 10:00 pm to find them since they are so slow moving it takes them a while after dark to wake up and get moving. Weevils are another possibility. They live in the ground also but it’s immediately clear if the problem is weevils since these sluggish and slow-moving creatures take evenly shaped rounded bites out of the edges of leaves, leaving the leaf with what looks like a scalloped edge.

Related posts:

1. What is eating my geraniums?
2. Budworms on Geraniums and Mildew Resistant Zinnias
3. Citrus Leaf Miners

Question from Cynthia:

Answer from Pat:
Some of the spiders you describe may not be true spiders but rather spider mites, but first lets discuss spiders. In organic gardens where no poisons are used, spiders are among the most beneficial of creatures, catching more bad bugs and pests than almost any other. Spiders are arachnids, not insects and they are terrestrial predators, catching and eating tons of pests annually. Reading between the lines of your question I feel that you agree with me it’s tragic and misguided to spray with poisons that kill these most helpful of creatures that help mankind worldwide grow pest-free crops without the use of poisons. Some experts are of the opinion that spiders do more good than any other class of beneficials. They also catch and kill insects such as mosquitos that cause disease.

I deplored a recent TV ad in which a little boy’s mother asks him, “if you see a bid bad spider what will you do? He says he’d call out, “Mother!” “And what will mother do?” she asks, and the poor little boy (squirming because he doesn’t like this a bit!) says, “Get rid of it!” She gives him a lecture about calling a pesticide company to “Get Rid of Bad Bugs!” and the little boy who knows far better than his mother asks plaintively, “Are we done yet?”

I told the TV station to “Get Rid of That Ad!” because they ought to know better. Spiders are not bad bugs but good and highly beneficial arachnids and we should not be teaching lies to children. Finally, the ad disappeared and a much better one appeared with cockroaches starring in the roll of the bad bug. This makes more sense.

Spiders are most plentiful in late summer and fall but, though all spiders are highly beneficial and all of them have poisonous bites, an expert on spiders once told me that very few have the capability of biting human beings. Most spiders do not have mouth parts strong enough to pierce human skin and therefore often when people think they got a spider bite or even if a doctor says they did, it probably was not one, since few house spiders are capable of biting humans.

That said there are some spiders that can bite and harm humans, though the bite if treated is almost never fatal. Black widows and brown recluse spiders (often called violin spiders) are among those that one does not want to have in one’s garden. Even black widows are beneficial but we don’t want our children or ourselves to be bitten by them. So I have no compunctions about killing black widows and getting rid of their messy webs. Though violin spiders do not proliferate in my garden, I would kill them also if I saw them, but I would not use spray.

The best defense against harmful spiders is to keep a clean garden. In the garden, black widows can be found most frequently in dry hidden places such as lidded wooden boxes, dry irrigation boxes, wooden furniture that’s under cover, woodpiles, planks, empty flower pots, inside dry garden ceramic ornaments, and under patio furniture cushions. Brown recluse spiders are fewer here than in the Deep South and Kentucky. They are only found inland in Southern California. Bites are infrequent but should be treated. These spiders also hide in cracks and crevasses. Before my great-grandchildren visit my garden or if I’m expecting guests I put on a pair of disposable or leather gloves and brush and check over my garden furniture and cushions. My favorite dusting method is to hit the pillows on a table. I also brush under wooden tables benches and chairs with a broom. If I find any black widows I squash or step on them. I sometimes find lizards under my pillows also and have even found tree frogs, though we have few these days. God forbid anyone should sit on these beneficial creatures! I have gotten rid of any wood piles or similar things that would attract black widows.

Also, long ago I designated a special out-of-the way spot for keeping empty flower pots. Smaller ones are arranged on shelves on the outer wall of my garden shed, under the eaves. Larger ones are neatly arranged on a platform out of sight behind the shed. I insist on having all empty pots kept upside down so water cannot collect inside them bringing mosquitos. If I ever notice an empty flower pot in my garden of any size I tell my gardener to put it where it goes. My trash area also is fenced off and it is in a special place by the road, with an arbor overhead but it has never attracted my grandchildren or great grandchildren to explore it. They love wandering around on the paths but since we keep a clean garden, all the spiders there are beneficial ones.

The webs you are seeing on creeping fig may not be the webs of spiders. They may be spider mites, little red spider-like arachnids that can suck the juice out of plants and turn leaves white, stippled or colorless. If I were you I would wash off your creeping fig with water from the hose before your granddaughter’s visits. I would also brush it daily with the broom, thus getting rid of the webs. Try to keep your creeping fig cut back so that you will have the juvenile foliage that sticks tight to the wall and not the rank stuff that takes over and grows massive. Additionally, I would brush off your outdoor furniture and the play equipment with a broom as I have described. You might be able to find an old wisk broom or have the fun of making one out of strong twigs and a light old broom handle. This kind works best. A long-handled feather duster can also work. After use, wash off the duster or wisk broom with water from the hose to make sure no spiders are caught inside.

Here are additional suggestions: Purchase a good handbook on spiders so that you can easily recognize the good and the bad. I will mention here a couple of good kinds I would never harm if I were you. I once taught my children and grandchildren and now teach my great grandchildren to respect and love the many good, beautiful and fascinating spiders. It is a good idea to show them which are the bad kinds too. Two years of age is not too young to begin but without instilling fear, only knowledge and fascination. Among my favorites among the harmless and beneficial spiders are the orb weaver spiders of which there are many types and species and also the wolf spiders. The orb weavers make huge webs that are particularly lovely when dew gathers on them. These spiders and their webs become ever larger in autumn. I break these webs if they cross my entryway walk but otherwise I leave them undisturbed and enjoy watching and marveling at the great works and lovely colors of these enterprising creatures and their gorgeous webs that catch flying insect pests on the wing.

The wolf spider is the one who inhabits garden flowers. It makes no web but instead hides inside a zinnia flower, for example, then leaps out and catches pests, such as aphids when and if they appear. Inside a red zinnia the wolf spider will be red and inside a yellow flower the wolf spider will turn yellow. I find these very beautiful. A third fascinating spider is the trap-door spider that makes holes in the ground with a camouflaged trapdoor at the bottom of a slippery cone-shaped entryway that unwary pests slide down into so they can be quickly caught be this effective predator.

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Question from Julie:

Answer from Pat:
Asian Citrus Psyllid is a devastating pest of citrus new to California and recently found furthest north in Mission Hills San Diego, having invaded or been brought in accidentally from Mexico. It is still in the early stages of proliferation in California, not yet in wide distributed, but the fear is that it is spreading northward. This exotic pest spreads a citrus disease that seems to have many names, including “yellow dragon disease” or (more frequently) “Huanglongbing” (HLB), Chinese for “Yellow Shoot Disease”, and formerly called “Citrus Greening”. (Eventually, among other symptoms, this disease makes fruit turn green and bitter, thus unpalatable.)

HLB is an extremely serious bacterial disease caused by several species of Candidatus Liberibactus. There is no known cure. The onset of symptoms of HLB do not show for some time after the original infection, thus in its early stages the disease is difficult to diagnose. Infected trees first show signs that look like mineral deficiency, but as the disease slowly advances it becomes clear that, instead of mineral deficiencies having discolored the leaves, it is HLB disease that has damaged them. As the disease progresses, the more devastating symptoms are seen, and these include green bitter fruit that cannot be eaten and drooping yellow new growth all over the top and sides of the tree plus the eventual decline and death of the tree. Here are two links which will lead you to extensive descriptions and discussions of this disease and the threat it poses to local agriculture. There are also photos of damaged fruit and leaves: Asian Citrus Psyllid Quarantine Information and http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/acp/

If you think your citrus tree or trees are suffering from this pest or disease, contact your local University Extension or phone 1-800-491-18799 and report the problem.

I wish I could suggest an organic control but I cannot offer any helpful suggestions other than to hang sticky yellow traps onto the tree and hope pests go to these traps first. You could apply the bagged dry earthworm casings on top of the ground under the tree to help control pest insects but this action won’t do anything to control the disease. However, maintaining a good organic soil and releasing beneficial insects might help, since beneficials control many pests and could also help control Asian Citrus Psyllid.

You have already read my recommendations of earthworm castings for insect control, but unfortunately, whereas the chitinase in earthworm castings attacks insects, it won’t help fight a bacterial disease. Once Asian Citrus Psyllid has inoculated a tree with bacterial disease, I do not know of any way to get at that bacteria unless it would be to inoculate the tree with a beneficial bacteria that attacks and kills the damaging bacteria. Finding such a bacteria would require extensive research. A better way would be to discover and grow resistant varieties of citrus. When an entire plantation of citrus or many plantations, are infected with a particular disease it is not outside the realm of possibility that certain trees could be found that do not succumb to the problem since they have a natural resistance. But bacteria is different from fungus. Grafting citrus varieties onto resistant root stocks is a major way to control fungus diseases, such as phytophthera, but in the case of bacterial diseases, it seems as if an entirely resistant variety of tree would need to be found and then grown in sufficient quantity to replace the sick trees. We can only hope that growers of citrus worldwide will watch for resistant trees. The problem is a bit daunting, since it appears a resistant strain for each citrus variety would need to be found. Scion wood taken from resistant trees could be used in future to create resistant varieties of citrus to save the citrus industry, plus of course our home-grown fruit.

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Question from Maria:

1. What kind of plants do ground squerals hate and will avoid nesting near on this very steep, very high hill side in Oak View Calif.
2. It is covered with these little darlings and their homes.
3. I don’t want to trap, kill, or hurt them.
4. I just want them to leave peacefully.
5. I’m afraid their ground tunneling will bring the whole hill side down onto the property.

Thank you for any help.

Answer from Pat:
No plant will make a ground squirrel go away. There is nothing they hate that much. If they like your hillside they are there for good unless you do something about it, and unfortunately there is no magic bullet that can get rid of them humanely. Also I don’t think of these unclean creatures as little darlings, no matter how cute the young ones may be. They belong out in nature but not in our gardens. However, I doubt they will make your hillside fall down. How many hillsides have you noticed or read about falling down as a result of ground squirrels? I am not aware of any myself and I have lived in California for over sixty years and I read the newspaper every day and listen to the PBS NewsHour nightly. If any banks were falling down as a result of ground squirrels I would have heard about it by now.

In order that you can understand what I am going to advise on this subject, I have to share with you that after my family emigrated from England to America during the 1930′s, my mother bought and ran a family farm in Bucks County Pennsylvania which is where I spent my teen years during the war. In order to get a tax deduction as a family farm, my resourceful mother discovered we needed to have 10 various kinds of domestic animals. She put us all to work raising 2,000 chickens, plus bantams, Pekin ducks, Muskovie ducks, geese, turkeys, 2 breeds of pigs, sheep, 2 breeds of cows (which I milked) and rabbits, which were in my total charge. All these animals were gentle and friendly and we loved many of them, though not the chickens. Nonetheless, we had to kill some of them in order to put food on our table and money in our pockets. I had to kill many chickens, but I flatly refused to kill the rabbits I had raised with love so my brother had to do it. My brother also shot pheasants in our woods, pigeons off our enormous barn, and from our fields in autumn, wild hares which we marinated for three days and ate as hasenpfeffer. Having experienced this toughening childhood with its many challenges and its great joys, I find I have little sympathy for destructive and disease-carrying pest animals, even though they are all live beings created by the same power that created me. Gophers, rats, and ground squirrels may have their place in the balance of nature, but not in my garden. I usually talk aloud to them before setting forth on a hunt which will end with their demise. It may sound silly but even as a child I used to lecture the chickens on the evils of pecking each other before I would kill them and the ones that did not peck another chicken got a reprieve from me. I took the time to go catch another of the meaner chickens and cut its head cut off instead. In the same spirit, I tell any gopher that sets up housekeeping in my garden that he had better leave post haste or he will soon come to a sudden end with a wire around his neck. Then if he doesn’t get the hint and leave I trap him. The Black Hole Trap works exceedingly well if one follows the directions. I told this to a close friend who has a bad gopher problem but she was not brought up on a farm like me. This friend of mine has a heart of gold and was shocked to find out that when I said, “I trap any gopher that comes in my garden” that the gopher would end up dead. She thought I was releasing them in the wild.—No way!

But gophers are not on the bottom of my black list. That place is reserved for ground squirrels and rats. In my garden gophers eat more white grubs than plants, but they ruin my rock walls and make mounds in the wrong places, thus they have to go. Rats are far more destructive of plants. They eat roses, bougainvilleas, and Madeira geraniums among other things, but ground squirrels, besides eating tomatoes and other vegetables and fruits and some plants, also carry bubonic plague. My great-grandchildren play in my garden quite often and they are dear to my heart. Thus I want no unclean animals frequenting my premises. Ground squirrels are more disease-ridden than roof rats. I tell ground squirrels they need to leave my garden in a great rush or they will soon meet up with a sudden and untimely death and like other pest animals should choose to reincarnate as a better animals the next time around. This is not totally organic gardening, but in the case of ground squirrels if I ever needed to get rid of one, I would purchase a proper bait box for ground squirrels and the correct bait to go inside it. Always use gloves when handling these baits and keep the box replenished with fresh bait. Follow directions exactly.

If you don’t want to manage your ground-squirrel problem this way and if you don’t care to hire a company to do the job for you, then you will need to plant flowering shrubs, such as plumbago, bougainvillea, callistemon, Solanum rantonnettii, leptospermum, melaleuca, rosemary, and lantana on the bank. All these shrubs and many others can be grown where ground squirrels are located with no problem whatsoever. The roots of these shrubs will hold up the bank. Ground squirrels are vegetarian and they will graze on a lawn like rabbits. They will eat the seed pods of ice plant, and chew at various plants but other than making holes and taking the occasional bite out of plants they really don’t eat to an annoying extent except for food plants. You can’t grow a vegetable garden with squirrels around. They will eat all the tops of the young plants and chomp on the vegetables before you get them.

Ground squirrels prefer open areas of bare land where they can climb up on something low and see all around and sun themselves. Unlike regular squirrels, ground squirrels are not forest animals. If you can thoroughly cover your bank with a thick shrubbery so that all parts of the ground are thickly shaded, then the ground squirrels will be unhappy on your bank. They will go away and find a sunnier area to make their burrows. So maybe there is a magic bullet after all. It just took me a while to figure this out. This is why I don’t have a ground squirrel problem myself, despite the fact they are in my neighborhood. From time to time through the years they have come to my garden but they always go away and never settle down to stay. This behavior does not result from the little lecture on their mortality that I give them but comes from the fact that my garden is surrounded by a thick and shady shrubbery. That’s what ground squirrels detest.

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3. Gophers and Fruit Trees

Ladybug

Do you think Lady Bugs are attracted to clover? I am a landscape designer and landscaper. I have a client in Clairemont, California. I just finished her garden. She told me that her garden was overgrown and not taken care of for many years. (She just bought a foreclosure house.) She said the garden has been infested with gross bugs. When I first went there I saw those chubby bugs aaaaalllll over her house walls, fences etc. They were mainly black with some gold on them and had a small head and pointed tail. They also had little spiky shapes on them, like some caterpillars have. I removed some of them but then something told me this is not a good idea and I googled that weird bug and found out it was the Lady Bug’s larvae! I felt so so bad for killing some of them. I know it is hard to keep Lady Bugs in place but that garden had tons of them + the larvae. The whole garden had the tall clover growing everywhere. This is why I thought that this plant had something to do with attracting the Lady Bugs. What do you think?

Answer from Pat:
Yes, lady bugs are hugely attracted to clover.

Ladybug Larva

One year in winter I had no time for growing vegetables, so I planted crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) as a cover crop on my vegetable garden. The next spring there were so many ladybugs on it that I am afraid some might have been buried when we dug the clover into the ground. This is a perfect example of why gardeners should plant pollen-bearing plants to attract beneficials.

The correct way to use crimson clover as a cover crop is to plant it in fall and dig it under the ground after it blooms in spring. This will hugely improve the soil, but planting a few seeds of this pretty plant amongst your wildflowers is also a good idea. While traveling in England I have often seen a clump or two of crimson clover growing and blooming on the edge of flower borders as if planted there on purpose. It grows about a foot tall and the highly ornamental flowers are born on 6-or-8-inch long stems. Each bloom is approximately two inches long and brilliant crimson red. The foliage of the plant is a vivid deep green. The flowers don’t last long but while they are there they are stunning. Then you can bury the plant in the ground to improve the soil. Certainly crimson clover was not being treated as a weed by English gardeners but more like a cultivated annual to be enjoyed while in bloom. Wildflowers attract many beneficials but, judging from my own experience, clover seems more attractive to ladybugs than almost any other plant in the garden.

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