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I’ve never had an organic garden before.  I grew up in a house on an acre lot, and there was lots of nature going on… but the garden and the flowers were always sprayed with strong chemicals, and so there wasn’t much in the way of garden insect life.  Here on the creek, and in a woody, rambling part of Dallas, we’ve got an amazing ecosystem.  I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing a lot of the critters!   I encourage some and discourage others, aiming for a balance  heavy on the beneficial-insect side that gives me more vegetables and flowers, fewer holes and spoiled fruits.  So far, I’m using Bacillus Thuringensis (BT), Spinosad, and insecticidal soap, plus hand-picking.  I’ve done my best to use only OMRI-compliant choices.

I think these giant rhinoceros beetles are very cool.  They get to live, because they eat decaying forest-floor matter.  The chickens tried for a while to eat one, but eventually decided it was just a moving rock.

They’re nearly as well-armored below as they are above.

Apparently pretending to be a bee or wasp is a good way to make a living.  These are Mydas flies.

I have to admit, I gave them a wide berth the first time I saw them.  They do this thing where they arch their abdomens, pretending to sting the ground; it’s intimidating.  The fact that they’re about an inch and a half long doesn’t hurt.  There is considerable debate about what they eat – they’re not well studied.  Current understanding seems to be that they mostly dine on pollen.  I always welcome additional pollinators in the garden.

Also not a bee.  This is some kind of fly, but I’m not sure exactly which species.  I think it’s one of the “Bee-like Robber Flies.” They do a very good job with their mimicry.  They and their larvae are typically insect-eaters, which means they’re my friends!

A Snowberry Clearwing moth; these look a lot more like bumblebees when they don’t have their proboscis out!  The Bee Balm has been a popular treat for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.  I will definitely plant more.

Finally, an actual bee.  I haven’t kept count, but I’ve seen probably ten or more species of bees in the garden, from mason bees to carpenter bees, bumble bees to these tiny emerald sweat bees.  We are definitely not lacking for pollination.

Ok, this is one of the things where I’m a little torn.  We’ve had lots and lots of butterflies in the garden, and some really beautiful ones at that.  Monarchs, swallowtails, Gulf Fritillaries… and I am raising several host plants, on which they lay their eggs.  More butterfly means less plant, of course, but it’s worth it for some of the nicer butterflies that don’t eat my food crops.  Within reason, I want these caterpillars to live.

However, we have a really thorough crew of red and brown paper wasps.  They wait until the caterpillars are close to an inch long, and then they scour the plants, eating them all.  I kind of wish they wouldn’t… but at the same time, I have had zero hornworms on my tomatoes, so the wasps are definitely my friends.  I just wish they could get down into the plants and eat the damned cabbage white caterpillars that made some of the bok choi into lace.

I grew up with wasps that *look* just like these in Houston, where we most often saw them munching on daylily stems to make paper for their nests.  They were mean as hornets; I got stung often, and with essentially no provocation.  I knew how to be careful – and I almost never got stung by bees or other wasps, but these red ones were just bastards.  I literally had them fly up to me as I was standing in the yard, and sting me.  Here, they’re sweet-tempered and have never offered any offense.  I don’t know what makes the difference.  Also in Houston, the nests were under the eaves of almost every house; here, I haven’t seen a single nest.  I’m betting they’re high up in the trees, but I don’t know why they have the difference of habit.  It’s a delightful surprise to have wasps that are such effective predators, while also being such good neighbors.

Mantises, of course, are one of the coolest insects there are, and every gardener’s friend.  I hope we get lots of eggs this fall.  I’ve seen probably half a dozen or more in various parts of the yard.

Charlotte says, “MWWAAAMMNVVVHAAKMMNK”.  These Argiope spiders have always been one of my favorites, and I feel specially fortunate to have one in the garden.  I had to move her from the tomato plants, so she wouldn’t get hit with the Spinosad; now, she’s taken up residence in the Confederate Rose hibiscus.  I plan to start feeding her spent silkomths, so she can yolk up and get huge like the last big one we had on the porch in Farmers Branch.

I sometimes stumble across an article or blog entry from months or even years ago, and wonder, “How did I miss this one?”

So here, for your enjoyment:

Maiwa’s multi-part adventure in visiting India to find the “wild” silks:

testing the silks for weaving and dye

Part One of the trip, outline

Part Two, Tasar silk in Orissa

Part Three, Tasar in Assam

Part Four, Eri silk in Orissa

Part Five, Eri in Assam

Part Six, more Eri

Part Seven, Harvesting and Spinning the Eri

….

The Organic Clothing Blog has an article with a lot of neat information, despite some small but significant errors.

….

And Bloodroot Spins had a neat blog post…

which pointed me to this article on Aurora Silk, which appears to answer some of my concerns… but well, just doesn’t. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this kind of response from Aurora Silk before – it makes a lot of distracting noise, points at interesting but irrelevant things, and doesn’t really address the meat of the issue. Making silk, at least on a production level, involves killing bugs.

I’m giving the chickens short, very supervised visits to the side yard – working to get them used to the idea of going back into the house, and also making sure that the dogs become acquainted with them as members of the family, rather than crunchy squeaky toys.

This is Thing One.  I keep getting the most photos of her, because she’s the chicken that will reliably come when I call.  She’s a lot less pettable than before they went outside – I’m glad to have them out of the upstairs bathroom, but I kind of miss cuddling their sweet feathery bodies in  the crook of my arm.

The chickens are definitely making more of a cluck than a peep these days – except Freebird, who still peeps and runs around like the sky is falling.  If she weren’t Freebird, she’d be Chicken Little.  But, this bird you cannot change. I think she’s a few days younger than the rest. They eat grass like a kid eats spaghetti noodles – they break it off about halfway down the stalk, and work it in long-ways. I tried to get a picture, but they’re so fast it’s hard to catch it happening.

As always, the thing that works best for getting a good shot is shameless bribery.  I’ve got a cabbage looper moth in my hand.

She goes for it.  They’re becoming a little heavier-bodied, and not quite as keen to fly distances, but they can still catch some air.

Nothin’ but net, baby.

One insect that the chickens are NOT going to be fed, is assassin bugs.  These voracious killers wipe out a lot of bad bugs; the beaky thing tucked under its chin whips out and impales the unwary victim, and the assassin bug uses it like a soda straw to suck out the insides of its prey.  The way they pose kind of reminds me of America’s Next Top Model… work those long legs, baby.

Chris built a chicken coop this weekend.  I helped some, screwing on the flashing and attaching some of the hardware cloth, but it’s really Chris’s baby.

We decided on a design based on the A-frame “Ark” style of chicken coop, like the Wentworth Mountain Arks.  This allows the coop to be moved from spot to spot in the garden, so that the chickens can cultivate and fertilize a new area every few months.  It’s also got a lot of cool and convenient features for managing them.

One whole side lifts off and pulls away, so that it’s easy to get access to the whole top portion.  This is useful for cleaning.

On each end, there’s a triangular door that hinges down to allow access for egg collecting.  Each short side has two nest boxes, and there’s a roost that runs the length of the center. I put two handles on each end, but even with the handles, it’s a heavy and ungainly thing to move.  It’s portable, for a given value of port.  I’m planning a lightweight “afternoon playpen” type of thing for them later on, made of bamboo and convenient to pop around the garden for them to weed and feed.

The chickens have access to an enclosed ground area below the body of the ark, by way of a gang plank that you can see in the picture above.

This rope pulls up the gang plank, sealing the chickens in safely for night.  We haven’t seen evidence of a lot of nocturnal prowlers in our area, but this security gives us peace of mind that the chickens won’t be dinner for some racoon or feral cat.

One end of the coop has a screen door that hinges up.  This allows us to get in to change their food and water.

While it’s not exactly comfortable, it’s possible to get entirely inside the coop.

The chickens in their new home.  I tried putting two in the top and three in the bottom, hoping that they’d call to one another and figure out the gangplank; this was a failure.  Chris ended up crawling into the run, catching each chicken by hand, and passing them up to me to put in the coop portion for the night.  Chickens are not very bright.  They just sat there doing their best “The Sky Is Falling” imitation, interspersed with random moments of  “Ooh, a bug!”  We’ll see if they can figure it out in the morning.

Kego was *fascinated* by the chickens.  She’s got a lot of herding instinct; I’m hoping that in time, she can be helpful in chicken management.

The squashes are blooming like crazy.

Unfortunately, today’s crop are all boys!  I need to learn how to make the stuffed-and-fried version; I understand they’re quite a tasty treat.

Looking closer, there’s something in them… the bees are still asleep this early in the morning, but the blossoms already have visitors.

Ants.  Tiny ants are visiting the squash blossoms.  I hope they are tracking pollen!  There’s a little opening at the base of the flower; it almost looks like a secret ant clubhouse.

Most of the tomato blossoms look like this.  This is a Better Boy plant; its blossoms come mostly in clusters of four or five, while the cherry and grape plants put out clusters of six to a dozen.

But on one plant, many of the flowers look like this.  They’re not double, in the sense of having two rows of petals – they look like two flowers worth of stuff packed into one flower.  This is still a Better Boy – same seed packet as the first one, growing in the same bed.

Then some of them (on that one plant) look like this.  Anybody know what’s going on there?

It doesn’t seem to be stopping the plant from setting healthy fruit, but they do have a slightly more ridged texture.  The brown mark appears to be just a little bit of schmutz from the remains of the flower, I don’t think it’s blossom-end rot.  We’ll see what we get… as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Hopefully they’ll taste OK!

I pulled the Shanghai bok choi and the remainder of the spinach, radishes, and salad mix.  Once we started getting ninety-degree afternoon temps, the lettuces all turned bitter and started bolting.  I had envisioned saving the seed from the bok choi, but then I learned that members of the cabbage/mustard family can all hybridize, and we’ve got a strong population of wild mustard in this part of Texas – I’d be much better off getting fresh seed this fall.  I put in seeds for more squash and some more of the purple orach.  I am planning to pull the rest of the mustard and plant some seeds for grain amaranth and pearl millet.

Because we’re doing the garden organically, I’m particularly on the lookout for pests.  These are squash borer moths.  Their eggs (you can see two of them, near the center of the photo) will hatch out into hateful little grubs which will chew their way into the squash stems and hollow them out, killing the whole plant for a small bite.  We’ve been spraying the squash with BT (Bacillus thuringensis, a natural insecticidal bacterium), but I figure any moth I can catch with a butterfly net equals 100 to 200 little caterpillars I don’t have to worry about.  They are a wasp mimic, and it’s amazing how well-ingrained the “don’t touch that, it stings” instinct is.  These two are in a little plastic tub, awaiting execution by pecking squad.  The verdict: the chickens declared them delicious.