Gardening

TheReview Wednesday, July 8,1992 — AI8

Amazing tablecloth discovery for catching pesky earwigs

You know all those kinda elab-
orate methods we have developed
to catch earwigs? Well, for me they
have been only a modest success,
but the other day I discovered a
surefire way to catch “em!

We had our supper outside and
carelessly I left the plastic, flanne-
Jette-lined tablecloth on the picnic
table overnight. Because it is lar-
ger than we needed I had folded it
double.

I went out in the morning to
pick it up, and to my amazement
the interior was absolutely crawl-
ing with earwigs. Most of them got
away, too, I was so surpmised!

Now I’m going to try a piece of
loosely-folded cloth on the table
and see what happens. Probably it
won’t work if it rains, but we'll
wait and see, anyway.

Talking about rain, wasn’t that
downpour a blessing! The only
place I have had to water today was
inside the greenhouse, where to
my disgust I found evidence of
another rat.

Two small green tomatoes were
chewed in half, and, judging from
the toothmarks, it had to be a
rodent helping himself to lunch.

“himself” has put out three
plates of Warfarin, which really is
vile stuff, but Sometimes it seems
necessary to take drastic action!

I hesitate to tell you this, but a
few days ago I was standing in the
den, talking on the phone and
gazing dreamily out the window,
when something with a long tail
sashayed casually down the trunk
of the Montana clematis.

‘Do you suppose
that rat has been
sitting up there
faking pot shots at
passing cats?’

Before I wakened up it had gone,
crossing the porch at its leisure,
and diving into the shrubbery just
beyond. For just a second I thought
it had been a chipmunk, but I
haven’t seen one of those in Sid-
ney ever ... it had to have been a
RAT ... but, what on earth had it
been doing up on the roof? One of
life’s many mysteries, I suppose.

Oddly enough we have recently _

been finding small chunks of moss
lying on the walk, or the driveway,
close to the house. We do have
some moss on the roof. Do you
suppose that rat has been sitting up
there taking pot shots at passing

cats? ... nah! ... even I won’t buy
THAT one! Now down to SERI-
OUS business.

S.T. brought me a sad small
piece of tomato plant, which he
said was the tip of a high branch.
The remainder of the plant was
slowly doing the same thing,
although it was loaded with fruit.

This is almost certainly a classic
case of “the wilts,” a nasty fungal
disease that attacks only certain
varieties of tomatoes. This is a
good reason for growing more than

one variety.

Another precaution would be to
look for the letters VF or VEN
after the name of a tomato, since
these letters signify that that par-
ticular tomato is resistant to Vertic-
illium (V), Fusarium (F) which are
fungus diseases, and (N) stands for
nematodes.

Any affected plants should be
destroyed, of course. These dis-
eases don’t seem to spread to
resistant varieties. I’ve actually
seen two long rows of tomatoes,
growing possibly two feet apart,
one of the rows sick, sick, sick,
and the adjoining row completely
healthy.

A caller asks what might have
caused her beets, carrots and
squash seed to fail to germinate,
even though she had covered them
all with Reemay cloth.

I honestly don’t have an answer
for this. We have had the same
problem here. The Danvers Half-

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long carrots came up like grass,
but not a single seed of Amster-
dam coreless, nor the baby carrots
germinated, although they were all
planted at the same time, in the
same bed.

It does seem as though the seed

must have been faulty, doesn’t it? I~

have now replanted the carrots and
am awaiting results. We also had
trouble with parsnips, but I hon-
estly think in this case, as the
seedlings came up, they were eaten
off by slugs.

I found a large one clinging to
the Reemay covering the parsnip
seed, and, as he died, I distinctly
heard him burp! The parsnips also
have been replanted.

Ruth called, very concerned |

about this year’s potato crop. She
plants Norlands for really early
spuds, and Yukon Gold for later
ones, but neither variety seemed,
this year, to produce more than a
very few tubers, and these often
small.

In one case a plant produced
only one large spud, and called it
quits! Being hopelessly curious I
went out and dug one hill of our
Benjies, just to see if the same
thing was happening here.

It was a relief to find three large
ones, eight medium ones and two
shrimps, and the plant still hadn’t
flowered, so was immature. _

I really felt sorry for this young
woman, since she had made such
an early planting, and was anxi-
ously awaiting those first, deli-
cious, butter-covered morsels.
Anyone else having similar diffi-
culties?

Maryke and spouse are redecor-
ating their large garden and have
put in a lot of rhododendrons,
azaleas and pieris, covering the
surrounding soil with landscape
cloth, followed by a heavy layer of
bark mulch.

They still have a lot of garden to
do, and it might be a real saving to
use newspaper, at least six sheets

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thick, instead of landscape cloth,
under the remaining bark. News-
papers are supposed to last under a
bark mulch for a minimum of five
years.

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575 BAY ST

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DISTRICT OF NORTH SAANICH
1992 SUMMER MEETING SCHEDULE

The following meeting schedule will be in effect during the

oa 3

months of July and August,

Committee Meeting-
Council Meeting-
Committee Meeting-

In September, the regular me
follows:

Council Meetings-
Committee Meetings-

(“Tuesday if the Mond

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