By Glen Wunderlich

As home gardeners know, producing successful vegetable gardens doesn’t come without a fight.  If it’s not wildlife such as deer, raccoons, rabbits or the like, it’s insects that’ll take a bite from your plants long before any human has an opportunity to do so.  However, before getting into what may have become a revelation to repel bugs, instead of various treatments after their presence and disappointing effects on plants, let’s look at how voracious insects find food in the first place.

A mosquito expert from Baylor University sheds light on just how their meals of blood are located. Jason Pitts, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in Baylor University’s College of Arts and Sciences, studies “host seeking”—how mosquitoes find their next blood meal. He said odor is a major factor why mosquitoes bite some people more often.

“Many insects find their way around the world through their sense of smell, even more than vision,” Pitts said. “Mosquitoes and other insects really are adept at finding places to lay their eggs or finding flowers on which to feed or finding people on which to blood feed just by the sense of smell.”

“Females are able to track upwind. They literally track,” Pitts said. “Once they get that stream of odor, they fly in and out of the stream of odor to orient themselves to try get to the host.”

It is not just odor. Heat—at very close range—also is very attractive for female mosquitoes.

“Mosquitoes are exquisitely sensitive to differences in temperature on surfaces. When it comes to heat or carbon dioxide, both can be beacons for mosquitoes as well,” Pitts said.

“Once a mosquito lands on the skin, they taste the skin to decide whether this is a good host or not,” Pitts said. “They can actually taste DEET, which is long-range repellant. They can smell it and avoid it. When they taste it, they will also fly away. Therefore, we know that taste is also important in some ways. Taste is the final choice before blood feeding.”

Mr. Pitts goes on to mention that reducing breeding area sources can help, but heck, Shiawassee County has more than its share of low ground – even swampland – and if all those smart folks in Washington D.C. can’t drain the swamp, just how are we going to do it?

Use DEET and cover exposed skin.  DEET is some nasty stuff and in concentrated formulas can melt plastic!  Yuk!  And, wearing long-sleeved shirts in this heat is about as tortuous as bites themselves.  Or, we can just stay indoors during the peak biting times of dawn and dusk.

Relative to the home garden, I may have stumbled onto the answer to repel animals and insects that sample my homegrown vegetables.  Without fencing of any type, there are plants animals do not prefer such as onions, garlic, pumpkins, and melons.  The secret with melons may be landscaping fabric that seems to spook wild game.   Although I can’t be sure definitively, I do know they don’t mess with our watermelons and cantaloupe surrounded by the black plastic.

Now, let’s consider insects and their uncanny sense of smell.  I’ve often wondered how Colorado potato beetles find potato plants – plants that are otherwise left alone by other critters.  In the past, we’ve been inundated with them and I’ve learned to spot the egg masses on the underside of leaves.  But, with about 40 potato plants thriving this season, not one egg mass has been seen.

Garden Potatoes

In fact, a mere total of 4 adult beetles have been picked off.  The difference this year in technique attributable to minimizing these destructive pests may just be the fertilizer:  Milorganite – an non-burning organic fertilizer that stinks.  The plants are bigger and healthier than ever and virtually no bugs.

We’ll keep you posted later in the season but a stinky garden may be the best repellant yet.

Registration is now open for the Michigan Iron Industry Museum’s popular Iron Ore Heritage Trail bike tours. Offered July 13, 20, and 27, the tours take cyclists on an approximately five-hour, 16-mile journey to explore historic sites and discover stories of the Marquette Iron Range.

Tours begin and end in Negaunee at the Michigan Iron Industry Museum, site of the Carp River Forge, where iron mined on the Marquette Range was first forged in the 1840s. Led by museum historian Troy Henderson, the tour pedals to the Jackson Mine, and then continues into Ishpeming, making several stops along the way, including Old Towne Negaunee and the site of the Pioneer Furnace.

Details and registration information are available on the Michigan Iron Industry Museum webpage at michigan.gov/ironindustrymuseum.

One of the key advantages mast orchards have over food plots is that once established, they require far less effort.  Maximizing the growth potential of your trees does require occasional regular maintenance, particularly in the early stages of growth. That maintenance includes reducing competition.

Grass and weeds are the biggest competitors of young trees, stealing water and soil nutrients away from your new plantings. That’s why you should establish and maintain a 2 – 3 foot circle clear of weeds around the base of each tree. You can begin simply by physically removing grass and weeds down to the bare soil. Next, add mulch or mats within the weedless circle. This moderates soil temperature extremes, improves soil moisture retention and retards subsequent weed growth.

Herbicides are even more effective but require extra care as they can be absorbed by the trees you’re trying to protect directly through the bark. If you use herbicides like Round-Up, Chestnut Hill Outdoors recommends you apply them only when there is no wind, that you use a colored dye mixed in the herbicide so you can see it being applied and that you us a shield or hood on the sprayer wand to better control where it is being applied.

Another option is to use grow tubes. In addition to preventing herbicide contact, the tubes trap and hold even more moisture, raising relative humidity and ambient temperature inside the tube They also protect trees from animals like small mammals that may chew the bark, or deer that may rub the bark with their antlers. Tubes also protect trees from insect pests and wind desiccation.

If site conditions allow, you can also reduce weed competition outside the 2-3 foot circle by herbicide spraying, mowing and if properly done, controlled burning. Read more

It’s June. Newborn fawns are putting tremendous nutritional stress on nursing mothers. Meanwhile, antler growth rates have kicked into overdrive and rapidly growing wild turkey poults, not to mention the dozens of other bird species, are scouring the landscape searching for food.

One of the best ways to attract and hold more wildlife on your land, including deer, turkeys and a host of other wildlife species, is by providing the proper amount and type of natural food to meet their year-round nutritional needs. Food plots are one way, but you can widen the window of attractiveness significantly by establishing mast orchards.

Planting a perennial summer fruit plot of mulberries from Chestnut Hill Outdoors is a great way to fill potential nutritional gaps that are occurring right now. Mulberries are the very first soft mast shrub to fruit in spring, providing ripe fruit as early as April and May in the deep south and early June further north. Read more