Andy Lopez
The Invisible Gardener
TV and Radio, Videos
They do feed at night and do seek out dark, cool, moist places to hang out during the day. Some common hiding places are under organic matter such as mulch, pine straw, leaf litter, and other debris, loose wood chip mulches, decaying matter, rotten fruit on the ground, wood, boards or tree branches that are on the ground, under dense growth of vines or thick cover and flower pots, any thing moist that will shade and protect them from the sun. As well as hiding in piles of firewood you didn’t use last year and let us not forget hanging out inside that small wooded shed you have out back that you haven’t been gone inside in years. ?While Earwigs are scavengers, eating dead insects, decomposing plant materials they can also eat live plants and damage your vegetables and feed on the flowers of plants, including marigolds, petunias, hibiscus, and many other plants. Earwigs leave many small holes in plant leaves and flowers. Seedlings and most flowering plants can be severely damaged or even killed when you have a large earwig population (coffee grinds will protect) .
Earwigs can produce large populations rather quickly and can become a major problem for the homeowner over night! They are attracted to lights so they will come in at night attracted to any lights that are on; as well as to any lights that you have on during the day which will cause them to hang out there esp if it is a cool area. Earwigs can be found in most homes and can get in through entry points like doors and windows, going up thru the broken walls and any cracked openings, broken screens. They do have a beneficial role in the landscape and have been shown to be important predators of aphids, mites, most insect eggs, and most soft bodied insects such as whiteflies. They do have a very disagreeable odor when crushed. Some Natural Controls Hint: earwigs are attracted to moisture Control water around the outside of the house. Repair any leaks. Convert to drip system to keep water below ground. Regularly control weeds and clean up dead debri. Eliminate high moisture areas around walls, in mulch, under stones, boards, etc. Control damp moist conditions in crawl spaces, faucets, along the foundations. Change landscaping by creating a dry border immediately around the house walls. Gravel or flat stones can make an attractive barrier against earwigs and other pest invaders. Rain gutters should direct water away from the house. Caulk or use weather stripping at all possible entry points such as doors, windows, pipes, repair screens and doors and windows.
Where earwigs are a problem, eliminate hiding places that have high moisture levels. Initiate a regular daily trapping program. Removing earwig habitats is very important to the control of all insects, including earwigs. As they are attracted to lights, stop lighting outside at night. Remove the white light and install yellow LED ones instead. Inside the Home Indoors earwigs should be vacuumed up daily; be sure to kill them and dispose of them by dumping into a plastic bag and tying and throw into trash, promptly so they will not re-invade. If earwigs are a regular problem in a building, inspect the area to see how they are getting in the house and seal and chaulk up cracks and all entry points. Repair all broken screens. Natural Sprays Essential Oil spray you can make a natural spray that will keep them from coming into the house. Use 1/2 oz per gallon water of any of the following essential oils available 1. citronella oil 2. cinnamon oil 3. pennyroyal oil 4. clove oil 5. lavender oil 6. citrus 7. basil 8. any natural essential oil can be use the above are just a few. Try your own.
Citrus Spray Use OTKO a Natural Citrus Cleaner. Spray straight thru a mister. Will kill earwigs and most of insects on contact. Soap Spray Use any natural castile soap like Dr Bronners soaps. They make peppermint, lavender, almond, tea tree and lot of other natural sources. Use 1oz per gallon water. Will kill earwigs when sprayed. DE SPRAY Garen Grade DE can be added to water and sprayed. Best way is to put some DE into a panty hose and suspend in gallon water. Allow to sit , pour into a gallon sprayer and spray. when dried the de will act as a barrier and kill and earwigs that crawl over it. You can use just dust the areas with it. Check List Vacuum, vacuum ad vacuum… Vacuum up any earwigs inside your house. Vacuum very throughly and as often as needed. Throw away the bags in the trash.
Natural Dust Garden Grade DE can be used as a dust around the house as well as under the house and the attic. Dust lighly and allow to sit. Boric Acid can be used as a dust in cracks and other areas between the house walls. Reducing Populations: Traps inside the house is one ongoing way of you managing earwigs in the home on a regular long term bases. Various Traps Ultimate Flea Trap is by far the best insect trap on the market. This one uses no chemicals and only a small light with a sticky mat that get the insects trapped that are attracted by the light. Place one in every room that has earwigs. It also works on fleas ( thus the name) as well as on spiders, cockroaches and most other insects. Outside the house Remove materials outside the perimeter of the building that could provide as a hiding place, such as ivy, plant debris, leaves in gutters, old wood piles, old leaf litter, piles of newspapers, or other organic material. Caulk and repair cracks, crevices, and other openings around the foundation or around the outside of the house. Manage moisture around the building by repairing or replacing leaky faucets , leaky air conditioners, leaky drain s, control water going into the foundation after it rains, and provide crawl spaces to allow for entrance. Repair or change the conditions to promote a drier environment. Caulk and weatherstrip around doors. windows. bathrooms water outlets as well electrical outlets. Go thru any areas inside that is dark and they can hide in. Cardboard boxes will make a great host place for them to hang out inside the house.
Remove any other debris such as old unused firewood. Always keep moisture away from your home by repairing any defective rain spouts, keeping the grading in an area so water drains away from the home, and by keeping proper ventilation in crawl spaces to allow area to dry out. Earwigs are attracted to outdoor lights, so replace them with Yellow LED lights, which are less attractive to earwigs. Treatment should be done outside with natural applications of garden grade DE around the building foundation, flower beds, mulch areas and turf within a couple of yards of the building, as well as in the crawl space areas of the home. Treat in a two foot band around the building adjacent to the foundation to limit earwigs from getting inside. Establish dry border right around the base of the houses for great control. Traps outside the house Newspaper: A rolled-up wet newspaper held togther with a rubber band. Cardboard Box: Punch pencil-size holes along bottom edge of cardboard box. Old Garden Hose: 12-24 inch pieces of garden hose Used cat food can. Add 1/2 inch any type beer or wine. Tupperware: Use a tupperwear like plastic container. Punch holes along the top edge of the tub, add 2 inches any cheap wine and cover with top and sink into ground. Finch Bird House can be used as a housing unit where you can place a 8 oz plastic cup 1/2 filled with beer or wine. I would try one of each and see which attracts the most.
Trapping is an effective, easy approach to reducing earwig populations. One of the key element of a natural earwig management program is a daily active trapping system. Just before dark, place the bird finch traps throughout the yard in out of sight places. In the morning, shake them out the traps over a pail of Dr Bronners Soap / water or any natural soap n water. Keep trapping until you do not catch any more earwigs. Traps can be hidden near shrubbery and ground cover plantings, or against the house. For fruit trees, keep weeds, brush, and the suckers (always prune) away from the base of trees throughout the year because they provide refuge for earwigs, snails and other creatures. Monitor populations by counting amounts of earwigs caught in the traps. Eliminate Their Habitat: Altering the habitat around your garden will reduce earwig population and damage. Get rid of their hiding places: boards, weeds, wood piles, plant debris, leaf litter, and any other objects that create dark, moist hiding places. Do not plant dense ground covers, such as ivy, mint, herbs,, next to vegetable or flower gardens. Raise seedlings indoors until they can go outside. Or start them outdoors on a table off the ground. Some folks advise against the use of organic mulch because they say it provides harborage to pests such as earwigs and spiders. I have the opposing view that organic mulch offers earwigs a diverse hunting area that will save your plants as well as provide for the earth’s needs. Mulch can easly be kept clean of earwigs by dusting with garden grade de several times per year or by dust just before and after every time you apply a new layer of mulch. Spraying the mulch with any natural soap will also control them too.
Andy Lopez The Invisible Gardener
orgaicdatabank.info invisiblegardener.com
Beware of dealers posing as manufacturers when purchasing your first hydroponics grow box.
So, you want to begin growing indoors. You have decided to purchase your first hydroponics grow box and grow your own. You are no longer willing to pay the high prices for fruits and vegetables sold by companies like whole foods and he decided to grow your own fresh fruit and vegetables right in your own home with hydroponics. By no doubt you’ve taken the time to do the research and decided against building a room for hydroponic since this is such a messy and expensive endeavor. It looks like if you’re reading this article you may have decided that you actually rather purchase a hydroponics grow box rather than modifying the room.
Since you’re in the market for a new hydroponics grow box there is something that I would definitely look out for before you make any purchase. There are other in reputable dealers out there that are posing as manufacturers of hydroponics grow box systems. They will often have the same photographs on their website as the actual real manufacturer of the hydroponics grow box you are actually interested in. They will often put misleading information on the website making it look like they make the machines they sell, but they do not actually manufacture the machines they sell.
Dealers are middlemen and not the direct manufacturers. Dealers are in business to make a quick buck and get out. Customer service means little to in reputable grow box dealer. When you call to ask sales questions and technical support questions you are speaking to somebody that is not truly familiar with the products they sell as they do not build the grow boxes themselves, and often they will give you misleading and inaccurate information on the product you are calling about. The point I am making to you is that dealers do not know their products as well at the manufacturer of the product and dealers will often give you wrong or bad by information or specs that can lead to a lot of trouble in the future.
If you were to actually deal with the manufacturer of the grow box you are interested in purchasing, the chances are you will be able to get a much better deal. The manufacturer of the grow box has much more room to go down on price than a dealer and can often make exceptions and deals that no dealer was not capable of doing. Dealers don’t have control over their fixed price and can rarely match the deal you can get directly from the manufacturer. Also when you speak to the direct manufacturer of the grow box versus simply dealer of the grow box you are virtually guaranteed to be getting correct information on the product you’re thinking about purchasing. The sales people that work at the actual manufacturing facility of a hydroponics company knows their product lines inside and out. When you speak to a sales representative from the manufacturer you are almost assured with 100% certainty that the information you are giving you is correct and accurate about the grow box that you are interested in purchasing.
If something ever goes wrong with your grow box or even during the purchasing and building portion of your grow box, you really are up the creek without a paddle when purchasing from a dealer versus real manufacturer. If anything were to go wrong with the transaction the dealer can do little to help you unlike the manufacturer who has much more control . When purchasing from a dealer versus purchasing from a hydroponics grow box manufacturer you risk that something could go wrong that the dealer has no control over, and you get stuck holding the short straw on the deal when the dealer and the manufacturer tried to work it out.
It’s even possible to pay a dealer for a grow box product and for whatever reason the dealer is delaying in sending money to the hydroponics grow box manufacturer for a few weeks, which could delay your unit shipping out! Many dealers that pretend to be hydroponics manufacturers are often the only dealers with no heart that use your money to purchase advertising and make money off you to real in more victims. That means that when you purchase of a grow box and send in the cash it might not even go to your grow box. Often dealers will rely on people purchasing grow boxes right now to those that already purchased in the distance past and you are actually paying for their machines. I would not be happy about this If was purchasing a machine.
For technical support and that product descriptions you definitely always wanted deal with the manufacturer of the hydroponics grow box and not simply a dealer of the grow box. This way you’ll get the best prices when you buy a multiple units, as well at the best technical support and product information possible.
If something ever should go wrong you much better off dealing with the manufacturer directly rather than a distributor who might be gone tomorrow or in your time of need. Distributors rarely think about their customers when the deal goes wrong. Distributor of hydroponics grow boxes have little commitment other than the website in the industry they are selling in just salesman who can sell vacuum cleaners one day and use computers the next.
Dealers disguising themselves as manufacturers often has many websites selling many different products and know very little about anything they sell including the hydroponic industry in general which you really need to be an expert on.
Be sure when you purchase a hydroponics grow box they you are getting it from the actual manufacturer and not some shady dealer who artificially raises the prices to try to rip you off. Don’t be fooled by these guys; they are just in it to make a quick buck and leave you holding the bag. When purchasing a hydroponics grow box do your research and make sure your purchasing from the actual grow box manufacturer and not from some grow box dealer who is trying to pose as the actual manufacturer to fool you in addition to rip you off, and charge you more!
James Lindsay Freelance Hydroponics Reporter http://www.homegrown-hydroponics.com
Training your plants to grow in a hydroponics grow box
Growing plants inside of a hydroponics of grow box is a bit different than growing plants in nature. In nature you have the sun which is providing plenty of light for your plants. In nature your plants have an unlimited amount of space to grow. Unless you are growing in a greenhouse there is no ceiling so you can grow as tall as you want. You can grow your plants as high as you wish with really no envelope. There is nothing stopping your plants from growing even eight or 9 feet tall. Even small plants can grow as tall as trees in nature.
But when you are growing in an enclosed space such as when you’re using a hydroponics grow box for instance. You also have to keep in mind that you’re going to need a couple inches of clearance between the tops of your plants and the bottom of your lights. Because the lights of a hydroponics grow box will create quite a bit heat which can burn the top of your plants if your life gets too close or if you have poor air circulation. This concept is the very reason that we are going to introduce you to the concept of training your plants.
Training your plants absolutely necessary if you’re going to be growing in a grow box or any other enclosed space. Because you have limited amount of vertical height you have to maximize the amount of grow space in your hydroponics grow box to its maximum. Naturally plants are going to want to gravitate towards the light. This is natural for them. Meaning all plant naturally grow towards the middle and directly towards the light source. In order to get the most out of your grow box you will train your plants to use every nook and cranny of space you have available to grow in. Now some of these techniques may seem far out to the new hydroponics grower, but these techniques are commonly used in any type of hydroponic garden, you should learn these well.
It is okay to bend your plants gently until the plant stays where you need it to. For instance there will be of great amount of space around the corners of your grow box. No plants are going to naturally grow into the corners, so in every grow you always have plenty of extra room to grow your plants that is often overlooked. So what we to maximize the space in your grow box is to make your plants grow into the corners. Grab the stalk of your plant you wish to train plant with your thumb and forefinger and apply pressure, gently until you feel the stem snap into place now into place. There may be an association of cracking but the plants will heal very quickly; often in days.
In a few days your plant will heal itself, much the same way you do when you break a bone. The fracture will heal much stronger than it was before the break of the branch and now will stay exactly where you want it. So you can train your plants by snapping them and get your plants to grow at 90° angles all around your hydroponics grow box. So by using this training technique you are able to take advantage of every bit of space you have your hydroponics grow box. . You can train your plants to grow into corners by simply snapping the stalks into the position you want it to stay positioned in. Now you can use all the space in your grow box to the maximum and train your plants to grow extremely short and dense.
Using these training technique you will be able to get the best possible yields of a small contained space. The small bushy plants will be able to deliver more yields than their traditional skinny, tall plants because they can support more weight, and they’ve been trained to grow short and dense; really bush out. This is the best way to get the most out of your space. I highly recommend that you learn to train your plants and practice training regularly in order to get the most out of your yields. This technique is necessary.
If you would like to learn more about training your plants as well as hydroponics in general I would highly recommend checking out the free DVD tutorial videos found on the website in this link. There you will find over 100 videos of DVD quality completely free of charge which teaches you everything you need to know about hydroponics. Topics included are picking lights, adjusting pH levels, and even using CO2 to increase your plants growth rate using a hydroponics grow box. Many other things as well as training are discussed on this website and is helpful to a novice hydroponic gardener.
Hydroponics Grow Box Guides by Allen Carrillo http://www.homegrown-hydroponics.com
Having a log cabin is more than just a way to decorate your garden and make it stand out. With the right kind of attitude it can turn your garden into a very special place where you can feel the frontier spirit of America, or the mystery of Russian fairy tales, or the peaceful glow of a Scandinavian sunset. Logs are known to be one of the first building materials on the planet, and centuries later they are still used to construct these lovely cabins — beautifully designed, warm and so comfortable.
In these hectic times there is such an evident desire to reconnect with nature and ancient traditions, so why not to acquire an authentic memory of those bygone times — an all wood, wholly natural and truly original garden cabin. Besides the obvious aesthetic beauty of your cabin and a sense of magical connection with the past, you will also find your garden cabin useful in many practical ways.
It can be a shelter from the troubles and worries of the outside world: the fresh fragrance of wood will help you to relax and unwind. You can make it your study — it’s atmosphere of peace is perfect for that. Or if peace isn’t quite what you wish, but joyful laughter and childish adventures, let it become a play area for your kids — spending more time in the garden will be good for them as well.
Or you can turn your log cabin into a place where you exercise: put your training equipment there and enjoy your exercises — in such a simple and natural environment you can’t help but feel healthy.
You could also decorate it quaintly, inside and out, and let it be a room for guests — they will be enchanted and impressed by your rustically beautiful guest-room. Or else simply furnish your garden cabin with a truly comfortable couch and arm-chairs, and you can rest in it’s peaceful silence after a long working day.
No matter what option you chose, a log cabin in your garden will shelter you with the simple generosity of rustic nature.
I am a creative professional with expertise in all aspects of successful marketing, public relations and management. I am an enthusiast in outdoors and gardening. Currently I am holding a Marketing Director’s Position at Solid Build, Inc. – provider of high quality real wood shed kits.