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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 16, 2022 12:10:45 GMT -6
The past couple of mornings I’ve noticed that the leaves on my most recently planted sweet potatoes have been disappearing. They aren’t, as far as I can tell, cut off and lying in the bed. They’re just gone. Yesterday I also saw some droppings in the bed, much larger than caterpillar frass, about the size of my index fingernail. My garden is fenced against rabbits, but small rodents could certainly get in. I haven’t seen any tracks or digging. Any ideas? Here’s an example of what I’ve been finding. I think it may be time for me to pull out the game camera and see if I can get that set up to watch the bed.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 16, 2022 15:06:42 GMT -6
I've got an idea that might have been a deer. My sweet potatoes look the same. My wife's little two-year-old doe is wiping me out this year. She likes sweet potatoes better than the air she breathes. I caught her out there three times yesterday. I spent the better half of the day today building a taller fence.
Has anyone ever tried driving 8' foot steel posts before? When I lean one over to put the post driver on it and stand it back up, I can barely reach the bottom portion of the driver. Then, I have to jerk down on it, from way over my head until I've driven the post deep enough to shove the post driver off the top and hope it doesn't clobber me on the way down.
I strung wire to about 7" feet high from 6:30 am until noon. It got too hot to stick with it after that, so I'll have to go back out this evening. It's 96 degrees right now, at 4:00 pm.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 16, 2022 18:17:55 GMT -6
Stanley needs to learn better manners, but I bet she’s extra hungry if she’s nursing a fawn.
When I first saw the damage, I immediately thought that it looked like deer. I don’t think a deer did get into the garden, though, as it’s fenced pretty high, and there was no disruption to the shade cloth that was covering these. I’m hoping it’s not something like a rat, but I looked at images of their droppings, and they didn’t quite match. I wonder if a rabbit could be getting in somehow. That looked closer, but it would have to be a pretty small rabbit to get through 2” by 3” fencing at the bottom.
We have driven 8’ t-posts for our fencing, but I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as many as you’re having to do. We hauled out a stepladder to be able to raise the driver. Be careful with what you’re doing. It gives me the willies to think of that heavy piece of equipment landing on your head or any other part of you. I know a ladder or stepstool is one more heavy thing to haul around, but maybe it would make the process easier and less tiring in the end (kind of like making sure you grab gloves before doing weeding, as you mentioned in another thread).
I hope your evening cools off enough and you recover enough to get more done. It’s been hot here till after dark most nights, but even with the heat, it’s better when it’s at least shaded again.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 17, 2022 13:52:25 GMT -6
I put up the game camera last night and got pictures of deer and cats outside the garden. There was some movement that the camera caught, also outside the garden, but I couldn’t identify for sure what the animal was. I’ll try to remember to put it back up this evening. (I had to take it down to bring it in to see the photos.). At least there was no disturbance actually inside the garden.
I still have lots of slips in a planter in my deck, so I can replant if necessary. I want to see if some of these denuded vines will actually leaf out again. I wouldn’t expect it of most other plants, but I also wouldn’t put it past a sweet potato to be able to manage.
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Post by macmex on Jun 17, 2022 18:13:44 GMT -6
I've seen groundhogs treat sweet potato vines the same way. Deer, rabbits, yes, them too. A rabbit can squeeze through a really tiny hole in the fence. One time I was thrilled when such a rabbit had snuck into my garden, causing damage, and squirted off when I disturbed his "repast." He was in such a hurry that he got stuck in the fence, breaking a leg. I managed to catch him and fix him for supper that night! I think that might have been a once in a life time event.
Sweet potatoes are pretty resilient. Yours might come back.
Somethings going on with our internet today. Pictures don't show up until a few minutes after the thread loads.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 21, 2022 6:51:00 GMT -6
Some of my defoliated slips are indeed putting on new leaves. Sweet potatoes are amazing!
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Post by john on Jun 27, 2022 11:02:30 GMT -6
Sweet potatoes are a favorite of just about every creature both above and below the ground! With deer I usually look for the little cloven hoofprints. That soil looks nice and soft you would definitely see some hoof prints if they are getting in.
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Post by john on Jun 27, 2022 11:04:14 GMT -6
A deer repellant spray will train them to stay away for a while. I have to surround my sweet potatoes with an electric fence!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 9, 2022 6:42:20 GMT -6
My sweet potatoes continue to do well after the mystery of the disappearing foliage. I may have a new guess about what did it, though. For the past week or so my husband and I have been locating and eliminating hornworms on our tomato plants. Thankfully we have gotten a lot of small ones before they get too large, but they sure are hard to see. (I’ve even done heavyhitterokra’s black light trick.). We missed a big one, though, on a potted tomato, and I hadn’t noticed the damage because it was hidden. What I did notice yesterday morning, though, was fresh, large frass in the garden bed below the plant. The droppings were still green, so I knew it was recent, but they were about the same size and shape as what I had seen in the sweet potato bed. (The droppings did turn dark in a couple of hours.) When I spotted the hornworm, it was huge, about the size of my thumb from the base of my palm all the way to the tip. In my first post in this thread, I mentioned that the droppings in the sweet potato bed were much bigger than caterpillar frass, but now I’ve seen some pretty huge caterpillar frass, and I think I have to be open to the idea that some kind of caterpillar ate my sweet potato foliage. Thankfully it hasn’t continued. I have no idea if it was a hornworm of some sort, but I did discover that a sweet potato hornworm does exist. At least now I know that there can be some pretty huge caterpillar droppings out there because there are some pretty huge caterpillars. www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/agrius.htm
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 9, 2022 21:16:24 GMT -6
The black light that I use to find hornworms and scorpions is a 100 LED light from Amazon. It's pretty bright. A 120-volt plug-in black light would work even better, but my garden is 500' feet from my house.
I'll post a link to the blacklight. www.amazon.com/Realhunlee-Flashlight-Detector-Blacklight-Scorpions/dp/B07GZH8273/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_i=B07GZH8273&psc=1
I can see hornworms from 10' feet away with that light. I think it paid for itself on the first night when I nabbed 19 hornworms on my first trip to the garden in the dark. I was amazed at how easy they were to see. Scorpions glow even brighter than hornworms do.
The scary thing about wandering around at night with a black light is that we have quite a few copperhead snakes around here that also prowl around at night. So far, I've not happened on to one of them while hunting hornworms, but the thought is always in the back of my mind. (I've found plenty of them at night with a flashlight while closing the door on the henhouse).
If you don't have a blacklight, you can spray your tomato plants with cold water and the hornworms will 'flinch' just enough that you can spot them sometimes. Look for the frass, then spray water right above it and watch for the flinch.
Happy hunting.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 10, 2022 6:27:21 GMT -6
That’s one hefty black light, heavyhitterokra. It’s bigger than mine, but ours did help. We just had to be closer and go over the plant carefully, and even then we did miss that big one on the potted tomato in the corner, but I think we may actually have forgotten to check that tomato entirely in the dark. We were kind of rushing because the mosquitoes were after us. It’s still a mystery to me where they find the water to breed in this drought.
I worry about snakes at night, too. Our little black light toggles back and forth to a regular flashlight, so I was shining that all around as we were making our way to the garden and around the paths. No snakes in sight, but I still feel jumpy out there in the dark.
I’ve had good success using the frass for detecting the location of the hornworms. That’s how I found the big one in the middle of my potted tomato. I’ve never heard of or tried the cold water trick before. We only have warm water in our rain tanks right now, and even what comes out of our kitchen tap feels warm to the touch these days. It’s not possible here to have a cold shower in the summers. I’ve been growing some lettuce indoors the past month, and I’ve been keeping a little bottle of water in the refrigerator to use when watering it. I figure it helps to keep the soil temperatures a little cooler.
I have a lot of shredded paper mulch in my garden right now. That stuff shows up very brightly in the light from the blacklight. We were kind of wondering if any neighbors could see the glowing from our garden when we were out hunting hornworms. I think they’d be really perplexed.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 11, 2022 12:59:53 GMT -6
We have well water here. It's dog gone cold, right out of the tap. When we first moved here we didn't have a hot water tank, nor any propane to heat it. All we had was cold well water to bathe in. I'm here to tell you, that was an eye-opening experience, to put it mildly! That water was cold! In summer, we put two 55-gallon barrels on a high scaffold to let the sun heat them during the day, then, in the evenings, we had hot water to take a shower, and to wash our dishes. In winter, we heated water in buckets on our wood stove. Thank goodness that only lasted about a year.
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Post by woodeye on Jul 11, 2022 13:40:38 GMT -6
This is the other reason I had to re-think the seasoned grasshopper purchase at Amazon. I ordered one of these to help me watch out for copperheads outside the house, and scorpions inside the house...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2022 13:50:16 GMT -6
That's the light I use. It's worth it. Scout and get it done and over with in short order. Then, I can spend more time on the squash bugs. keh
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Post by woodeye on Jul 18, 2022 6:50:07 GMT -6
This is the other reason I had to re-think the seasoned grasshopper purchase at Amazon. I ordered one of these to help me watch out for copperheads outside the house, and scorpions inside the house... Stepped outside last night to get a measurement of my rear tractor tires, I was adorned with my green headlamp and carried the blacklight I got from Amazon the other day. Found my first scorpion with the blacklight. It made the scorpion appear fluorescent-like...Groovy!
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