Garden Pests

Picnic Beetles

Have you ever found little black beetles with yellow spots on your overripe garden fruit? These little buggers are called picnic beetles and are instantly attracted to your ripening sweet corn, berries, cracking melons, and tomatoes. They burrow into the fruit causing more damage.

Picnic Beetle

The best idea for control is if you have these as problems, make a daily check on your melons and tomatoes. Harvest anything before it gets overripe. You might have to harvest a couple of days early.

Insecticides are not a good idea because you are too close to harvest. If really bad, try fruit juice with some vinegar and water into pie pans. The beetles will down themselves. Stale beer works also.

Garden Pests, Vegetable and Fruits

Melons and Tomatoes seem to Crack

Why do melons and tomatoes seem to crack when the fruit gets ripe? The cause is inconsistent soil water and heat. Do not let the soil dry completely then water. The surge of water in the fruit will expand causing cracking. Heat is involved when the fruit does not absorb water during the day and start taking water up at night when it cools outside.

Watermelon cracking
Watermelon cracking

To help alleave this stress, keep the soil damp but not wet. I use drippers so the water soaks down deep lessening the soil drying out too quickly. Adding a mulch certainly helps.

Melon cracking
Melon cracking

Certain varieties tend to split because of a thin rind. Icebox type of watermelons are called exploding melon because of this reason.

Flowers (annual and perennial)

Datura Flowers

Datura flowers open up at night-blooming on rounded plants up to 3 feet tall. Newer varieties come in a variety of flower and leaf foliage. Other names of the non-cultivated variety are Angel Trumpet, devil trumpet, and jimsonweed (which is a weed found in pastures and are poisonous to cattle and horses).

Double yellow datura flowers
Double yellow datura flowers

I have tried for several years to start indoors without any success. This spring I placed the planted seed container in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, took them out, and success!

The older white single flower variety naturalizes easily. Coming mainly from Mexico and Central America were used as a sacred plant 3000 years ago. Some varieties originated in Asia. All datura plants are very toxic and hallucinogenic. This makes them resistant to insects, deer, and rabbits.

Double purple datura flower
Double purple datura flower

Once started, they grow easily in full sun and drought tolerant once established. They make great specimen plants where you can enjoy the fragrance of the flowers. Datura grows 3 feet high and 2 to 3 feet across, so give them space.