Neem Oil For The Win!

For quite a while now, Momma Daisy has struggled with a variety of ailments. Rusts, mildews, tiny insect bites and so forth. She has managed to survive, but not thrive. Recently, a beloved reader of this blog who is also an excellent gardener (my mom) recommended Neem Oil - Garden Safe Insecticidal Soap. I bought it, used it and voila! Momma Daisy is back and rewarding us all with her transcendent beauty. I left both photos below fairly large and clickable.

A most excellent flower, Momma! Thanks!

A perfect leaf. I love the dark-to-medium green design of it. If you look, in the lower, left-hand corner, you can see one of her older, abused leaves.

Thanks to my mom and Momma Daisy, we've got class and color back in our garden.

Momma Daisy Adventure Playset Update

About two months ago, I bought a small pop-up greenhouse that we dubbed The Momma Daisy Adventure Playset. Momma and her daughter had been devoured by some unknown life form and the Playset was procured as a force field to keep Evil at bay. Did it work?

You bet!
Her flowers may be washed out because they are the first of the season and I haven't fertilized her yet. The leaves, however, are the best they've ever been. She's growing like crazy, too.

When I moved her into the playset, I divided her and repotted both halves. I'm not sure what to call the two halves. For now, they're both Momma Daisy.

The Momma Daisy Adventure Playset

Momma and Daughter Daisy (and the new Granddaughter Daisy™) have been being nibbled by some creature. It could be birds, snails or caterpillars, but it's more likely grasshoppers. Their leaves have been shredded and I've cast about for some means of protecting my precious children.

Enter the Momma Daisy Adventure Playset*!

It assembled in minutes and at 2'x2'x2', it houses two large pots, one medium pot and one smaller pot.

I'll let you know how things go.

* - Actually, it's called a Flower House FHPH120 PlantHouse 2 Pop-Up Plant House, but I like my title better.

Moms Are Always Beautiful

... just like Momma Daisy!

Momma Daisy is blooming right now.

I'm trying to remember what year I got her. I'm thinking it was 2005, but it could have been earlier. One of the women who gave her to me (a going away present at work) retired recently. She was always amazed that Momma was still alive. Momma's been my favorite plant ever since I got her, a symbol of people I loved.

Killing Waxy Scale (Diaspididae) on a Gerbera Daisy

Valued entomological engineer Tim suggested in the comments of my previous post on Momma Daisy's large-scale scale infestation, that I examine predatory insects or environmental controls as a way of dealing with my waxy enemy.

Predatory insects are my favorite means of control and I typically kill aphids with a small container of ladybugs and a bag over the plant. The ladybugs can't fly away and greedily annihilate the aphid infestation. Unfortunately, waxy scale (Diaspididae) has few predators. There's a parasitic wasp that can be used, but obtaining them as a homeowner rather than a grove manager is difficult. There's not much else to choose from.

As Tim notes in his comment, Diaspididae is very resistant to pesticides. The females' waxy covering protects them from contact poisons and I've yet to have much success with systemics. Diaspididae crawlers can be killed by contact poisons, but the females produce so many offspring for so long that wiping out an infestation completely requires total concentration. I've never been successful at that, probably because I've never been able to completely coat the plant in poison. One little spot on a leaf left untouched and some set of crawlers will survive to the next generation.

A thorough examination is required.
I've had the most success with a combination of crushing them with my fingers and a contact poison such as rubbing alcohol. That's known to be incomplete because, again, you just never seem to get every scale and every surface on a large plant.

We have deep concern for the health of Momma Daisy.
This leaves environmental controls. Here's what we know about our two combatants - Diaspididae and Gerbera.

Diaspididae:

Chrysomphalus aonidum has a preference for humid environments and cannot tolerate freezing temperatures.

Gerbera:

Can tolerate some frost but freezing temperatures will kill plant to the roots.

Hmmm. The freezer may well be my friend. It looks like we need to do some experimentation with freezing infested plant cuttings to see how long it takes to kill the little brutes.

Here is our plant sample with scale, as approved by our Maximum Leader. Now, on to the freezer!

Flowers

I've been cruising the blogosphere as usual. There's all kind of nasty things being posted. There's a bunch of people who have posted the YouTube video of Rosie O'Donnell and Elizabeth Hasselbeck (spelling?) going at each other. Others have posted about deaths in Iraq, year-to-year. There's yelling and accusations and name-calling and people pointing out each other's imperfections. Yes, I know I do it, too. Sometimes, I get tired of it all. I went into my kitchen and saw Momma Daisy and her daughters being just as happy as little Gerber Daisies can be.




Thanks, Momma Daisy. I needed that.

Solar Fermentation Of Tobacco

As my tobacco dries in the rafters of the Catican, the pressure builds to construct a fermenter. If you've not been keeping up with the story, I grew tobacco, harvested it and am now drying it. I don't smoke or chew, this is just a lark inspired by a Hank Williams Jr. song.

"We make our own whiskey and our own smoke, too.
Ain't too many things these ol' boys can't do."

After drying, the tobacco needs to be fermented in a hot and humid place. There are lots of instructions for building a fermenter using a heat lamp, a thermostat and a portable cooler like the ones you take camping or on picnics. It looks like a big pain and a fire hazard. Heat lamps and Styrofoam in close quarters? No, thank you.

What is it we're trying to do? We want chemical reactions to occur. They happen when the temperature is around 120 F and there's plenty of moisture in the air. I don't see why the temperature has to be consistent. If you need 3 weeks of heat, which is 504 hours, why can't you achieve it in ten hour increments? If the temperature drops, it just means the chemical reaction is suspended temporarily.

You can make this happen using the Chamber of Doom.

Long time readers will recognize this.

Back in the day, my favorite plant, Momma Daisy, suffered a massive scale infestation. I bought a 33 gallon trashcan, put a glass lid on it and put lit candles inside. The candles were supposed to use up the oxygen and the scale would, over time, asphyxiate. Momma Daisy would emerge refreshed from her hot and humid spa treatment.

She did indeed emerge refreshed, but most likely it was because the scale were smothered in the resulting heat. The glass top turned the trash can into a greenhouse. The temperature got so hot that it melted the candles.

The scale felt the same way.

Bingo.

If I can make a greenhouse trashcan for my tobacco, I can ferment it without any fire risk. Plus, it will not add to my carbon footprint and contribute to Global Warming Climate Change.

I mean except for my trip to Home Depot to get the gear, the plastics in the trashcan, the manufacture and shipping of the glass, the ... Well, you get the picture. I won't mention those things when I show it off to my green friends. They're gullible enough to think the whole thing very Greta Thunbergian.

Anywho, I'm going to get started on this today. I found a lovely digital humidity and temperature monitor which tracks highs and lows that I can get from Home Depot. I'll set up the trashcan with a water container at the bottom and then check the monitor each evening, resetting the readings after recording the results. If we can hit 120 F or higher, I think we have a winner.

At any rate, since I have never consumed tobacco, when I'm done and smoke the stuff, I won't have any idea whether it's good or not. I'll claim success and move on to my next Dixie recreation effort, growing cotton. Winning, y'all!

The Warmer Weather Favors Momma Daisy

We're having a mild heat wave here in San Diego. It's been an abnormally cool summer, but for the next three days, the temperature will be in the low 80s. Higher temperature means faster metabolisms for the scale and necessarily faster respiration.

Advantage: Momma Daisy.

Momma Daisy Update

She's clean! No scale at all as far as I can see. The reconstruction of the Catican PC has cut way back on my photography as that's where I usually process my photos, so I don't have any good shots of Momma Daisy's stems, but other than a snail infestation which is easily fought, she's back in the green of health!

Odds and Ends

YouTube takes about three days to start counting video hits from your blog. I posted the wonderful Bucket of Fish video on Monday and only this morning have my hits been recorded on YouTube. If you haven't watched the video, I highly recommend it. If you've seen it before, watch it again. The music is fun and fun is good!

I've got two more daughters from my Momma Daisy coming up. They've really started to grow and have about 6 leaves each. One of Momma's daughters gives me red flowers, but I haven't been able to harvest any decent seeds from her. I moved Momma and her kids out into the front yard where the bees are plentiful, suspecting a lack of fertilization in the seeds, but Red hasn't given me anything yet. Now that Winter is approaching, they've all shut down the flower production.

I've got another sunset video done and posted on YouTube, but I'm not sure if it's worth posting here. Should I just post it and not worry about whether or not it's perfect?

I kind of miss doing Thursday 13s. Last time I did it, though, I didn't recognize any of my old friends. It had gotten too big and everyone was practically anonymous, the exact antithesis of the point of the TTs.

I missed doing my Wednesday World of Good post again. I had one ready to go, but Blogger kept fighting me with photo uploads and life got in the way after that.

EyeClops BioniCam Second Test

Well, I'm growing less pleased with my BioniCam. Momma Daisy was nice enough to hold still while I photographed her petals. Here's one at 100x.

I can't tell if this is Jupiter or a Gerber Daisy.
Here's one at 200x.

You can see some of the structure of the petal, but it's kind of hard to make out.
The BioniCam is a serviceable and very inexpensive device for getting magnified photos, you just have to acknowledge its limitations. It's really designed for photographing objects that are held perfectly still on a flat surface where you can take the time to focus properly. Despite the way it is advertised, it's not the kind of thing you would carry around with you on a hike for quick and easy photos.

A Gratuitously Beautiful Gerber Daisy

Momma Daisy comes through again!

A New Generation of Daisies

I had almost given up on my most recent planting of seeds from Momma Daisy. I was just about to stop watering the pots and try again when I noticed four sprouts coming up. More are sure to follow. Here's the biggest of the lot.



Here at the 'Post, we're so proud! We'll soon be handing out Jobe's Plant Food Spikes. (They're the daisy version of cigars.)

Creating Posts With Windows Live LiveWriter

I just downloaded and installed Windows Live in an attempt to find a nice desktop publishing platform for the blog.  I've been wanting to do this so I can insert photos and wrap text around them more easily than having to edit the raw html in blogger.  The Official Artist of the Feline Theocracy has been recommending LiveWriter for quite a while, so I figured I'd try it out.

What better picture to play with than one of Momma Daisy's daughters?

Ooh!  The formatting works very well indeed and LiveWriter allows me to resize the photo by dragging the anchor points in the editor.  Very nice and very intuitive!

There seem to be all manner of other tools associated with Windows Live that I'll explore in the coming days.  As I do, I'll post the information as well as my Windows Live contact data so we can play with the IM parts of the product as well as photo and video sharing.

I like it.  I like it a lot already.

Update: What happens to you when you click on the picture? When I do it, my PC wants to open the image with Corel Photopaint rather than Internet Explorer. I've seen that from time to time on other sites and I don't get it.

Long Time, No Daisy

We've had a series of bouts with predatory caterpillars and a few parasitic insects, but we've managed to fight them off. One of Momma Daisy's girls has decided to reward our efforts with a bloom.

Death to Leaf Miners!

...and all who support them!

This is what those pigs have done to one of Momma Daisy's granddaughters.



Here's how they work.

Leafminers are usually the larvae of flies, moths, or beetles that feed or "mine" between the upper and lower epidermal leaf surfaces. The larvae tunnel through the leaf creating a narrow, whitish colored serpentine (winding) mine (Figure 1 ) or blotch (blister) ( Figure 2 ) type mine. The tunnel is clear, except for the trail of black fecal material left behind as larvae feed. Female flies puncture or "stipple" leaves with their ovipositors to lay eggs in the leaf tissue or to feed on sap.

Here's how to kill them.

Systemic insecticides may provide the greatest control of leafminers. A systemic insecticide is absorbed into the leaf tissue, killing the insects inside. Non-systemic insecticides stay on the leaf surface and do not affect insects inside of them. Thorough spray coverage of the upper and lower leaf surfaces is especially important. Apply the pesticide according to directions outlined on the container label.

I'm going to put this little daisy outside and give her a systemic. My concern is that the bug that laid the leaf miner eggs might have infected some of the others or when these larvae hatch, they might attack my other indoor plants.

Momma's Girls Just Keep Blooming

Another of Momma Daisy's most recent children (or grandchildren) gave us a flower that is worthy of a click.


Click on this image. It's worth it.

Momma is so Proud!

Another of her daughters has grown from seed and is now blooming. This might even be a granddaughter. I mixed all the seeds together when I harvested them from Momma Daisy and her children, so I'm not sure whose girl this is. It's another redhead. I love it. There's another (grand)daughter blooming as well who is orange. Pictures of her will be posted later.

Click on the image for a much better version.

A Christmas Present from Momma

...Momma Daisy that is.


Yep. She's blooming again!

Momma Daisy

...doin' what Momma Daisies do.