2009's most menacing or troublesome pest for you

Mine is the slug--I had no other pests or disease, well, maybe some rabbit damage but the slugs just mowed my beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and eggplant. It took me awhile to figure out what was eating everything but once that was determined...wham...I brought out the beer traps and nothing. Not a slug to be found in any one of them. I went back to the books, the friends, the professionals (which I'm embarrassed to say, I'm one of) and realized that I had buried my cups of beer and yeast in the ground thinking that this would entice the scoundrels into the cups. Wrong! They need to climb up the side of the cup/container before they'll make the decision to go for a swim. Of course, by this time the change was done. They seemed to be concentrated in the southwest corner of my enclosed garden. My client, on the opposite side of me (NE corner) had minimal damage. Which beast did you in?

Deer are enemy #1 closely followed by slugs. I despise them.

all of the above and include Iris borer

Tell us a little about the Iris Borer--I have irises and would love to know what the damage looks like and what you did to combat them.
Thanks, Dee

Japanese beetles and slugs.

Japanese Beetles, Marcia. What are they attacking in your garden? What are you using to control them? Thanks, Dee

The borer gets into the rizome and disolves it.
You will see a shell of a rizome in early spring and it will have little holes in it.
OHHHH and NO flowers or leaves
We use a Bonide for Borers early in spring spray everything

This message was edited Oct 1, 2009 3:39 PM

pack rats, pack rats and pack rats.

I remember my mother calling me a pack rat; so this is a real animal? What does it do and is it a real rat?

I think they are also called desert rats. They look like rats and come up through the ground from underground tunnels(you will see holes in the ground). They take everything(pieces of plants, pieces of cushion, pieces of wood, pieces of wires...etc) into their tunnels and leave some in exchange. The stuff they leave for me are pieces of cacti..etc. This year they stole all of my plant tags(written on plastic large sized plant tags) and took them into their nest that they built in my Barbque. They can also get into garage and set up their homes in car and chew the car labels etc. Nuisance and they also have their favorite plants to chew on and eat up. I try to work around them but lost tons of plants/furniture cushions to them.

lovetropics--What are their favorite plants? Do they appear to collect them for food, for fragrance, nest building because of plant color? Any ideas?

HolyCow now crows foraging for stuff wont bother me so much.
What a pest

I always thought of it as a phrase and never knew there was such a thing as pack rats.

I wish I knew what they don't like :).
They love bulbs--so I started to put in poisonous bulbs such as amaryllis. They stay away from the bulbs but eat the shoots. The bulbs will eventually die because the shoot keeps getting eaten up.
They eat veggies/herbs. The herbs they don't eat are the ones I have such as mint, organo, thyme.
I put in one plant first. If they don't eat that plant, then I put in more plants from that category. They don't eat cannas so I have several species of cannas.
They did not eat jasmines so I added more species of jasmines. Stinckers ate them up this spring. No winning with these.

Stinckers? Is this another rodent?

this is what they look like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pack_rat

lovetropics--Very cool article.

We dont have em, just moles and voles

whitefly whitefly and more whitefly

add slugs to my list

That is a fascinating article about the pack rats. It's too bad they're a pest in the garden and home, because their cleverness is admirable.

Indeed ! Well said !

Have you tried Bubblegum for the pack rats? I think Bazooka works better than Bubblicious. If your not into killing them then maybe live traps. (if they don't steal them also)

I have read somewhere that they don't like Mint. Interesting the herbs that they did not touch are in my mint bed. I will try putting mint branches in their holes and see what happens. I am not fond of traps.

Slugs and snail, (and not puppy dog tails) and a rat that crosses the wires each night to eat an orange from my tree, leaving the empty shell for me to collect each morning, ugh! Begging DH to bait a trap.

Sometimes people can be menacing or troublesome pests (oh you know you were thinking of it! :-) )

edited for spelling


This message was edited Oct 6, 2009 7:05 AM

My neighbor resembles your last remark, Sue!

Can you wrap the oranges in netting (like bird netting) or onion bags or old nylons?

Leaf rollers. They only infest my cannas, but I have lots of cannas. They sew the leaves shut. You can actually see the threads on the rolled up leaves. They lay their eggs inside. They hatch into ugly caterpillars and eat the epidermis of the foliage. So you end up with rotten-looking shredded leaves. It's almost impossible to keep up with them. I unroll the leaves and feed the cats to my fish, but "Mama" comes back and starts in again with her "fly-by-night" attacks. After a while, I just give up. So right now, most of my cannas look like crap. Surprisingly, a couple of cultivars seem to resist the leaf rollers. Wish they all did! Even thunbergis bacillis isn't quite effect on this little buggers.

Below is Tama Tulipa who seems to deter the leaf rollers somehow. Not a scratch on her.

The orange tree is too huge, probably 15 ft tall and as wide or wider, and covered with oranges. If I was able to wrap from the top, the rat could climb it from underneath going up the trunk. And he's nervy enough to often sit in one of the hanging pots I have under the tree eating his fruit and leaving behind the rind and his droppings on the plants.

Rats on rats!

That article on the rats was great.They look like the gerbils sold in pet stores.
Said they like shiny things , what about a package of sequins or shinny confetti, do you think it would keep them busy enough to leave some things to you?
I know that sounds silly but I am big on distraction and redirection.

Hi Gardengus,
I can try the sequins.
I have a dry river bed and I threw some blue marbles(from craft stores) to make it look like water. Now all the marbles are gone and I think packrats took them.

I wish my slugs were as entertaining as your pack rats. I love the idea getting stuff in exchange for what they're taking even though the 'exchange' items are probably not of the same value.

NorthernSeasons, it would have been perfect if I like cacti, pieces of broken stems..etc.LOL:)

slugs slugs and more slugs.....

slugs is it

Loving the views of 2 burly cute guys with chainsaws.
They are cutting down the Scotch pine infested with borer.
They called me "mam"

Hi, I am Mickey and I am new to this site, but was interested in what pests are prominant. For my garden this year it was japanese beatles and bag worms. The beatles were especially hard on the tomatoes and the bag worms are attacking my spruce trees. Does anyone have ane good recommendation about how to get rid of the mature bag worms apart from picking them off? We sprayed with seven for both pests and it worked for the beatles but not the bag worms.

you have to spray for the bag worms as soon as they hatch out in the spring..MAy or June.....after they get so old spraying will not work.....

bluepoppy, thank you for the information. I will have my husband do the spraying early in the spring. Do you know does the cold weather of our winters kill the adult bag worms?

I enjoyed your pictures, too, ge1836.