Darned caterpillars are here and they are hungry! I found this one chomping on a Candida Double White.
I love the climate down here, but the bugs and I are NOT going to get along, I can see that already!
They're here!!
Looks like it might get a big fat bud for lunch too. ACK!!!
Welcome to 10a Cala, where the weather is warm and the bugs are a pain in the patooty. Unfortunately they ALL find brugs delictable.
We got some here too.. Hate it! I found 18 on my passionflora.. it nearly died.. I killed them all!
I am sure you will find some more around.. :o(
I'm not looking forward to the bug season outside, and I'm still fighting white flies inside. What a pain.
Well, Susie, didn't you know those catapillars were just waiting for you to get all those plants to Texas so they could chow down. LOL
You're going to have to get a holster, pruning shears on one side, and bug spray on the other (might as well get some chaps while you're at it, after all, you're in TEXAS now!).
I didn't have problems with that last year .. going after the whiteflies right now myself.
Ronna, I know what you mean about the chaps, I think everything down here has stickers, even the frogs and lizzards have horns!
Ada, yes, they were just waiting for me to arrive with new food for them! The only problem with spraying for the cats, there is a butterfly preserve not far from my house, don't want to kill the pretty ones!
Cala, be careful with those caterpillars. We have a lot of varieties of asps in South Texas, and their sting is very, very painful. What you think are plain ole caterpillars just might be asps.
Yikes, I've seen pictues of those in books. I will be very careful. I've already discovered fire ants, lol, don't want any more stings!
If it is not one thing, then it is another! How is that for early mornnig wisdom?
I am lucky! I have only two kinds of caterpillars here to worry about.
Kell, you sound like Roseann Rose Anna Danna, I just loved her.
It took me a while to get used to all the Texas bugs when I moved here in 1996. My first encounter with Fire Ants is rather comical in retrospect... I was out with a realtor looking at properties before I actually made the move. We were near Canyon Lake, and there was a beautiful view I wanted to take a picture of. I had on a short skirt and sandals (I was younger, and they were in style then), and I felt something pinching my ankle. I was intent on the picture, and thought it was a prickly weed. Within a few seconds I was feeling some intense pain and looked down to see my feet and ankles covered in Fire Ants! I was standing on a mound and hadn't realized it. I ended up with bites (and they are ugly looking bites) up and down both legs and on my bottom! I had never even heard of Fire Ants before that day...we'll leave the Scorpion story for another day...That was a fine "welcome to Texas" LOL!
OUCH!! Not a good intro to Texas, I'd say!!
I found this recipe in Backyard Problem Solver book by Jerry Baker, maybe it will help you with your caterpillars.
1/2 lb of wormwood leaves
2 Tbsp. of Murphy's oil soap
4 cups of water
Simmer wormwood leaves in 2 cups of water for 30 min.
Strain, then add the Murphy's oil soap and the remaining 2 cups of water. Pour the solution into a sprayer, and spray your plants to the point of run-off. Repeat this treatment until the caterpillars are history.
Who knows maybe this will help.
Cathy
Grrrrr fire ants. If there are any around they find me. I stay with bite all year round. But I can say they have never gotten my bottom. Poor Gretchen.
Now where would one find wormwood? lol
vic
Mar 30, 2004
Artemisia is the same as wormwood. I have some from Darius Susie if you want me to send you some.
Ah, okay. No, I don't need it, thanks. I use thuricide when I have to for caterpillars. I don't garden for butterflies intentionally, so don't mind spraying for cats.
Well, here's a little tip from the South Texas swamp country, I use a rose systemic to fertilize and feed my few brugs and it works pretty good for cats & those nasty web worms that will be next in hatching out soon.Yuck !
Texas is great for growing everything bigger & better...even the darn bugs!
Welcome to Texas...Hope it helps...
Oh my, those fire ants sound dreadful and they must move fast! LOL
Cala I get some weird satifaction killing the pillers' with an open flame. Just use one of those long bic lighters for the grill. They wiggle and leak goo like crazy. Ahhhhh Horn worms where are you?! If you can't stomach that then take a jar with some soap in it and hand pick the pillers' off the plant put them in the jar. Leave the jar in the sun and you will have stewed pillers'
MiniSchunz those pillers' on your passion vine might have been butterfy infants.
Kell my DH says he says scorpion stings hurt worse than fire ants.
when i was little, my best friend's big brother used to collect those horrible stinging caterpillars that only eat oak leaves (no clue what they're called..) in ziplock bags.. then put a capful of alcohol in each baggy.. and sit and watch them squirm and twitch.. and die slowly
lol
Gee DR, that sounds just awful. I neve thought I could feel so sorry for a caterpillar!
Gross!
I got sting by caterpillar once.. IT was sooo painful and I wanted to cry. It was sting under my barefoot! OUCH,... last sat, I was moving my brugs.. and got bit by fireants!!!!!!! I got bit by fireants the whole last weekends! Sick of fireants!
The easy thing to kill them is Dig some of fireant(pile) and dump on other fireant pile and dig that pile and dump on first pile of fireants. They both fight and kill eachother!
The Over N Out stuff for fireants really works. It gives what they call season long control. I spread it over my whole yard, flower beds, grass, everywhere, early in the spring and no more fire ants for almost all year. I usually will start to see them again like around October or so, so it doesn't work for a year, but for at least all summer when they are so bad.
Kell your such a girlie girl! LOL
Kauffman survival of the fittest, cycle of life, blah, blah blah...
i've been stung by those blasted things sooooo many times
in various places of my body
lol
palms of my hands... soles of my feet... even my rear end becuase i accidentally sat on one one year
lol
i HATE those things
we normally get the trees sprayed yearly now to prevent them (since we *DO* have 7 oak trees... and these cats only eat oak...so all of them get full of those nasty things..
that's really the only chemical pesticide i think we use.. but it sure is worth it lol
Those stinging caterpillars are asps. They get on oak trees and mulberry trees. When I first got married, we had a mulberry tree that grew over the driveway. My DH got stung several times while mowing the yard. They really made him ill.
they've never made me sick or anything
they just sting.. and it hurts, and the sting site (normally in a circle in the shape of the caterpillar thingy) swells up a little at each sting point..
lasts for a few days, then it's gone..
No, not a girlie girl DR. LOL
The only beings I kill without hesitation are slugs and snails. But on occasion, I do get a vision that my hell will be, being slimed for eternity by all those that I killed.
Well, found out that by putting a birdfeeder out near the brugs that the birds also will eat the cats. Now what to do with the sunflowers that are coming up in the flowerbeds?
My neighbors still laugh when I mention fireants, lol. I had put a 20 gallon brug on top of a fire ant nest by accident. I then went to move the plant and since it was heavy, I leaned it against my shoulder. The fire ants were all in the pot and up the plant itself so they got in my shoes, shirt and hair and were biting me. I started running toward the house and at the same time was taking off my shoes, socks, shirt........the neighbors thought I was crazy! I'm just glad the ants didn't get in my shorts and underware or the neighbors would have really gotten a show! I am allergic to bees and the fire ants really scared me, but by the end of the day the bites were completely gone. We use Amdro or something like that on the nests now, it kills the queen I think.
Wow, Susie, you were trying to put on a strip show for the neighbors. LOL I would've too if I had fire ants in my clothes. LOL I haven't seen any in my yard as of yet but I know they're coming.