Damn Rabbits!

I have coexisted with rabbits while gardening for decades. They have always done minimal damage and I never thought too much about them. This year, however, one of them decided to raise her babies in my currant bushes - and use my garden to feed them! I came home from work yesterday to find all of my cauliflower plants looking like this!

Evidently they don't like cabbage, or they were saving it for later - this cabbage sits right beside the cauliflower.

They also started in on my brussels sprouts! They only got about half way through them. The thought of not having brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving motivated me into immediate action.

The garden is now sporting a shiny new fence all around it - take that bunnies!

The rest of the garden is looking good. Look at these nice looking pea pods!

How are your gardens doing?

Follow up on the Yellow Jacket Trap

I posted earlier in the season about the new Yellow Jacket Trap from Raid - I thought a follow up might be nice since the apples falling off trees everywhere right now are attracting them by the dozens.

Yesterday morning I was picking up apples off the ground and noticed Yellow Jackets for the first time this season - so I wondered if my trap had stopped working. I checked it and it was full!


This picture is not very good - but those dark things floating in there are dead yellow jackets!


So I hung a new trap (I kept the old one up for now) in a new area of the tree.


And now, just 24 hours later it is over half full and I am not noticing any more yellow jackets on the apples and in the yard.

This product is awesome if you hate bees and are scared of stings like I am. It only works on yellow jackets - it attracts them and they crawl inside and can't get out and drown. It is all natural and so much less scary for me to use than sprays.

More information on this product on their website: http://www.killsbugsdead.com/.

A new addition to my yard

This is the Raid disposable Yellow Jacket Trap. I hate bees, but I especially hate yellow jackets. They can sting more than once - all bees should have to die like wasps and hornets do after they sink their stinger in you. Three years ago on vacation I got stung multiple times by a yellow jacket - it was in my sheets in my bed - I woke up the entire resort. It was NOT FUN! So when Bzz Agent invited me to take part in this campaign and test the product for free I got very excited.

Every year the apple tree attacts tons of them as they eat on the rotting apples. With the addition of a small pool in the backyard for Andy this year I am afraid the population of yellow jackets may interfer with my enjoyment of my own yard. I will not let the insects win.

This product is perfect for me. It hangs innocently in the apple tree and doesn't look like the killer that it is. It attracts them with an odor that they find irrestiable and then it traps them and drowns them. When it is full, you just throw it away. And for those of you who know how green and crunchy I am - it is not full of chemicals - it is a non-toxic plant based attractant.

This year it is going to be Kathi 1, Yellow Jackets 0. I may have to even keep a tally of how many I trap and how many traps I go through.

You can buy this product at most home improvement, food, drug or discount stores. It costs $6.99 per trap and it attracts yellow jackets over a 20 ft by 2o ft (400 square feet) area. If you have a big yard, you might want to buy more than one.

Oh - and it attracts the queens so it will kill a whole colony. I'm all for eliminating whole colonies of yellow jackets. I'm sure yellow jackets fill some role in this world - just let them fill their role somewhere other than my back yard.

For more information, go to killsbugsdead.com