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No more diatomaceous earth, now for oil traps

I talked with a nice county extension agent today who said anything soft-bodied could be hurt by diatomaceous earth (DE) including toads, though being large and hopping they’ll be less so than a slug or earwig. But, I love my toads, so no more DE.

She did however suggest oil traps to reduce their population while I work to make the habitat less absurdly full of rotting wood (thanks past Claire for all the mulch).

So, now we have five pitfall traps with about half an inch of oil in them.  Three have used fryer oil (vegetable oil) and two have fresh, unused vegetable oil.  (That big plant in the lower right is the Brunswick cabbage I have been nursing along under a glass jar.  Time for it to face the world!)
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Testing summer plants in the land of earwigs

I set out some of the tomato cages today. In the raised bed with the worst earwig depredations, I put one each of poblano pepper, Rio Grande verde tomatillo, Tommy Toe tomato, and Peruvian ground cherry.

I put out these four plants to see if the earwigs attack them and if so I’ll try petroleum jelly around the stem. I have other plants of all these so if any get completely consumed it won’t be the end of the world.

There have been fewer earwigs out in that bed since I’ve started putting out diatomaceous earth. However, in the adjacent bed, they have now moved onto a lettuce that was less dusted. So, maybe it’s helping?

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Baby basil and mature greens

Lettuce, spinach, and corn salad greens for salad. Thinned the window basil and used that on pizza.

Dinner
We noticed water welling up from the cut basil stems after dinner. Thank you to Wes for the photo.
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Funnel-lily on weekend expedition

Hiking with Paula and Briar today. We saw several cool early spring plants, as well as first of season for us on Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and Black-and-white Warbler.

Thanks to Mom for identification of carrot-leaf lomatium!
A common spring favorite! Fringed puccoon!
As we were about to leave, I saw a little hill that looked like it might have interesting lichen rocks or something else good there. Sure enough!! Paula found blue funnel-lilies! Two plants. The other had two buds.
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These daffodils better be good

When putting in edging yesterday, we dug up and divided a cluster of non blooming daffodils. From reading the daffodil people’s website, either they hate me or need more sun. It took two hours to get them all in.

It took a long time also because i needed to fill in the dirt along the edging more tidily. You can see the clumpy spot on the sunny side in the middle. I didn’t want to step on the daffodils later, so that needed to happen first.
All the daffodils in place between each Salvia and all the front edging with tidier fill.