Wednesday, July 9, 2008

THEY WERE HUGE!!!!

Ah, gardens. They are both amazing and terrifying, home to tasty veggies and fearsome beasts.

So, I mosied out to the garden today with the cherubs to pick a green pepper (we're making homemade, turkey-burger sloppy joes tonight). As I was out there, I surveyed my mostly weed-free garden and checked up on the status of my many veggies. It was raining, so I didn't want to pick anything other than the requisite green pepper (even though there were quite a few zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers that were ready to harvest).

I wandered over to our thriving tomato plants and, to my dismay, noticed that there were bites taken out of several green, German Queen tomatoes. Now, I've heard from neighbor Doug and Tanya that possums and/or racoons like to sample tomatoes when they're getting close to ripe, so I leaned forward to pluck the sampled tomatoes off (thinking all the while that I would try neighbor Doug's trick of hanging metal pans from the twine on which our tomatoes were ... uh, vining ... in an attempt to scare away the little thieves). I recoiled in horror when I saw this ...




Thanks, by the way, to one of the most helpful websites ever, What's That Bug, for the photo. As you may have noticed from previous posts like this and this, I'm not a big fan of critters. I wasn't about to get close enough to this thing to take a picture. The monstrosity was, like, 3 1/2 inches long and thicker than my thumb!!!!

Anyway, I ran to the shed for our organic pesticide, and emptied the entire container on our five tomato plants. It was then that I noticed that there was not one, but two of the hideous creatures lurking on my poor German Queen plant. Well, they should be gone tomorrow, because I pesticided the heck out of 'em!

9 comments:

Kellan said...

I hope that does the trick! I love home grown veggies - especially tomatoes!

Take care - Kellan

Mom2Da'Gorgeouses said...

Yucko-Poo!! No way, I'm a biology major and my dh still can't get over the fact that I HATE bugs!!

Kat said...

We have so many bunnies around here that I haven't planted a garden. My FIL has a horrible time keeping the little stinker out of his. Hmmm. I guess I'd rather have bunnies than those huge bugs though. ;)

Holly said...

We tried to grow tomatoes in pots on our balcony in California. It wasn't long before we started noticing something was snacking on them. We googled it and learned about those things (not sure what they're called), once we new what to look for we found them everywhere. There must've been 15 on our one little plant. It never stood a chance. Ours weren't that big though, THANK GOODNESS!!!

Tanya said...

So much for organic gardening - eh? :)

Life in the Crazy Lane said...

The pesticide was organic. I've been told, however, that I need to actually remove and smoosh the beasts. Yikes. Looks like Big Daddy has a new job!

Oceanchild said...

Oh my gosh. That is just gross! On another note, I can't believe you have so many veggies already. Maybe my tomato plant isn't doing as well as I thought...lots of blossoms...no fruit.

The Buntens said...

ick! I would have freaked a little, too.

Anonymous said...

GROSS!!!!! I think I would have run screaming!