Debugging

[altivo]

Well, the Japanese beetles are still here, though I've finally made major dents in their ranks. After filling two traps with corpses, they were still chowing down heavily on my pole beans, turning the leaves into skeletal remnants. Following advice from the local Master Gardeners group, I filled a plastic container from cottage cheese about half full of hot water with a couple of drops of dish detergent in it. Then I went and held this under each infested leaf and brushed the bugs downward. They are incredibly clumsy, and usually take flight by dropping and spreading their wings until the air catches under them and lets them rise back up, flapping furiously. That means that when disturbed, they fall straight down for a foot or more. All that land in the hot soapy water sink like pebbles.

After repeating this process on two consecutive days, there are only a dozen or so beetles on the leaves tonight. There won't be new ones born until next year, and these are lame ducks who have already laid their eggs as I understand it, but they'll go on munching up my garden until the frost unless I stop them somehow. One more trip with the soapy water should pretty well take care of it.

Otherwise things are looking good. I posted a photo of the first squash harvest yesterday. Another zucchini arrived yesterday and more will be ready tomorrow. Hot peppers are blooming, tomatoes are producing green fruit furiously though none have ripened yet, beans and snow peas are blooming and starting to set fruit. I need to thin the lettuce and beets again, and use some basil before it grows into a tree.

Also debugging a new Linux installation. I emptied out my FreeBSD partition at home and loaded Wolvix into it. Since Wolvix is Slackware based, I could just add soft links to many files and applications on my existing Slackware 10.2 partition and they are working just fine. Wolvix Hunter is Slackware 11, with a v2.6 kernel, so it's a nice step up using a fairly simple install. Did the same to my desktop machine at work this morning, cleaning out the 8 Gb Windows XP partition to make way for Wolvix. I'm going to try using Wolvix exclusively for a while and see if I should just replace my older Slackware entirely. So far, it seems just fine, with the advantage of the newer kernel and a new improved version of XFCE. Besides, the pawprints and howling wolf logo are so appropriate for furry use. ;p

Comments

[alexsious.livejournal.com]

Hmm I have never tried anything but kubuntu. though I have used CentOS (it SUCKS!!!!!). I have a 250GB hard drive with only kubuntu linux on it, so I should probably try a bunch of different linux distros. that would be pretty neat. I have never heard of Wolvix though. is it user friendly?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Slackware itself is not considered very user friendly. Wolvix tries to do for Slackware what Ubuntu did for Debian.

In any case, you can try Wolvix without installing it onto the HD. As long as you have a CDWriter and a reasonably fast net connection, go to www.wolvix.org and download the latest LiveCD ISO file, write it to a CD, then boot that CD.

It's hard for me to rate "user friendly" since I've been using UNIX systems for almost 20 years now, and had a background in VAX and IBM mainframes before that. Linux is always a UNIX clone, and no matter how hard they try, it never acts or feels like Windoze. In my opinion, that's a good thing, but not everyone agrees. XD

Slackware was the first Linux distribution I ever used, way back in something like 1990, so it's an old friend to me and I'm not qualified to judge. I will say that Wolvix has a nicer selection of user applications pre-installed than you get with a standard Slackware distribution, and seems less cluttered up with things that have become obsolete over the years.

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

Our garden is also being hit hard by the Japanese beetles. The pole beans are particularly populat here, too. We are already getting loits of nightshades- tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Our Gypsy peppers are bearing like mad this year, and we're getting a nice heirloom Italian red sweet pepper called Nardello. Lettuce is done. We have lots of fruit on our butternut squash vines. Unfortunately, the Italian eggplant that I really enjoy looks like it will not bear for us at all this year. Still, I love August in the garden.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Would you be willing to share some of the seeds from that Nardello pepper?

Eggplants are difficult this far north. The only ones that have ever worked for me have been the Japanese Ichiban variety.

Plant more lettuce now. You'll still have a harvest before the frost.

The Japanese beetles are apparently a plague around here this year, for whatever reason. Hopefully next year won't be so bad. Fortunately, pole beans are vigorous growers and will probably keep going. Something has also demolished my arugula, mustard greens and brussels sprouts. I thought I put them out late enough to miss the cabbage butterfly (and haven't seen any little green squirmies) but perhaps not.

[flamekist.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you can blame us Georgians for the Japanese Beetle. Rumor has it that back in the early 1900's, Kudzu was brought in from Japan to control Georgia's widespread erosion problems. Kudzu is a rampant grower and easily solved any erosion issues, but soon started overtaking valuable farmland so Kudzu's natural enemy, the Japanese Beetle, was brought in. Apparently the Japanese Beetle keeps Kudzu in check in their native homeland but not so over here. Turns out that the beetles would rather munch on everything else rather than go back to eating Kudzu!

I find that a diluted solution of Isotox (goes by some other name these days) keeps them off anything ornamental but it's not good for vegetables. My meager crop of pole beans is suffering greatly.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That certainly seems plausible. Nothing wants to eat kudzu unless it's the last green thing on earth.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

You could try spraying the leaves with neem oil. What I have heard it is used in organic farming.

Finns also have been using a mild dilution of a mild detergent called "mäntysuopa" which is an organic soap-like product made using something from pines as one of the ingredients. YOu might want to ask from your finnish speaking colleagues and ask about it. It is fully biodegradable as well. However, this stuff is not very good for the plants if it is left on them for long periods of time, so the plans should be rinsed clean about 20 minutes after spraying them with the stuff. This should drown the bugs because of the lack of surface tension.

Just some things I have heard I thought I'd share. I haven't got practical experience on this, but it's always worth investigating ;)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neem_oil

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I found some information in the same forum thread in english about neem...

"The effectiveness of Neem Oil is based on several modes of action. It disrupts insects' hormonal balance so they die before they molt to the next life stage. Neem Oil suppresses some insects' desire to feed and also repels in areas that have been sprayed."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Japanese beetles are pretty tough when it comes to most kinds of chemical control. Their larvae are susceptible to something called "milky spore disease" that can be introduced to the soil over a period of several years, but since the adults travel for miles after hatching out, it's not always effective to treat a small area. By the time the adults are visibly eating your flowers or vegetable plants, they are mature and will not molt again. I suspect that neem oil would act too slowly and too late with the Japanese beetle. Effective controls are almost all physical, and involve trapping or removing the adults before they do much damage.

Spraying plants with a solution of detergent is effective against a number of pests if conditions are right, but as you point out, it needs to be washed off before it damages the plants. Detergent residues in the soil are not necessarily good for the plants either.

Like so many pests that have been brought in from somewhere else, the Japanese beetle is impervious to natural controls in North America, and has become a serious problem. This seems to be an especially bad year.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

That is why I would recommend biodegradable detergents. :)

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

You should be able to get some easily biodegradable detergents, Sounds like you need one of those mini irrigation setups, just pour some detergent in turn on the water and hey presto done, then you can run clean water a little bit later :)

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Japanese beetles and linux, this crazy life you leed is going to get to you in the end ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*puts you to work catching beetles and sets the wolvix to watch you and make sure you do the job* ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Bah! *grumbles quietly removing beetles from leaves* Hey beetles get the hell out this horsey's garden. *says it in the Japanese equivalent*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Japanese... I wonder. Maybe I should put up signs in Japanese? "Trespassers will be squished?"

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

It couldn't hurt ;)