My Not-So-New Nemesis: The Earwig

I have found earwigs to be among the most grotesque, horrendous, disgusting creatures on this earth for years now.  And yes, I appreciate all forms of life due to my education in conservation biology and as a Christian.  But my appreciation really takes a dive with non-native species that invade my life and property.  Starlings?  Not a fan.  Manitoba maple?  Can't stand it.  Earwigs?  I loathe them.

Not the clearest photo, but these little horrors are a bit tough to catch on a phone camera!

I had a university professor once (an awesome one, I might add) who told me that earwigs have amazingly maternal tendencies.  I think she thought that it might soften my decidedly unyielding detest for the creatures.  It didn't.  I like maternal animals.  I am one!  But earwig mommies are just something I don't sympathize with.

Particularly now.  I have had earwigs in our garden each year, and have always been horrified at their sneaky, yucky way of dropping from hiding places when you move something in the garden, their way of ending up in your line-dried laundry when you take it in (even after shaking!), their creepy-crawliness in general, and the way they multiply like crazy.  GROSS.  I actually was thinking to myself, just over a week ago, that they didn't seem to be that bad this year.  I wasn't encountering them at a comparable rate to the last couple of summers, I was only seeing the odd one here and there but definitely not being bombarded by them.  Things changed though.

I went outside to check on the vegetables I had planted in a built-in planter box on our deck.  It had one zucchini plant, one eggplant, two red pepper plants, and at least a hundred tiny carrot seedlings coming up.  This is what I found (keep in mind that these photos are from about 3 days ago, the current situation is only worse!):

Zucchini: early days of damage.

This plant had a bunch of gorgeous blooms.  All eaten away, now to nothing!

The last carrot seedling standing (now there isn't even one).

Pepper plants are apparently yummy.

Pepper plant number two suffers a little less damage (at first!)

Apparently eggplant leaves are not as palatable as some of the others, but they'll take what they can get!

 Not only did they eat my gorgeous veggies (I may add I am on planting #3 of yellow beans right now and these ones have all the leaves eaten right off the tops of the seedlings), but they added insult to injury when they left excrement all over the plants, which is pretty obvious in the zucchini pictures.  Yuck.

So enough moaning and complaining, what do we do about these dastardly insect villains?  The way I see it, we have three options:

Option 1
Leave them alone.  They actually eat slugs and aphids, and maybe you like that.  If you don't have an overpopulation, then they might actually be beneficial to have around.  It does pain me to admit that.

Option 2
Use some sort of awful insecticide that could potentially harm beneficial insects and leave a toxic residue in your plants where your kids or pets could be affected.  Yuck, no thanks.

Option 3
Use some organic and natural methods and hope for the best!  Here are a few I've put together and plan on trying this summer:

• Use diatomaceous earth around your house foundation, walkways, fences, trees, and other structures.  Apply it in several different applications in late spring, about a week apart.
• Take advantage of the earwigs' preference for damp, dark, close places and make some traps.  These could include:
• a dampened, rolled up newspaper
• a flower pot, upside down but propped up slightly and also filled with dampened, crumpled newspaper
• an empty grapefruit half
• cardboard boxes with a few small holes in them and baited with oatmeal or bran
• Two pieces of 2x4 lumber, neatly stacked one upon the other.
• These are all live traps.  You can shake them out into a bucket of soapy water, or boiling water, or feed them to chickens--I understand that the majority of our fine feathered friends relish them and they're a cheap (and abundant!) source of protein!  You can also seal them in a plastic bag to suffocate and throw them in the trash.  That seems a bit harsh, even to me.  Just make sure that you don't put them on your compost pile!!
• For a more deadly approach, use an empty tuna can, fill it partially with oil, and place it on the ground in the garden where they will be interested (you could put honey or molasses in the oil to attract them, but I'm not sure it's really necessary and seems a waste of good baking supplies).  You can also half-bury a bottle of beer (drink about 2/3 first!) in the soil so that they can crawl in through the bottle neck and drown.  You'll also pick off some slugs this way too.
• In the late fall, before the snow, you can pour boiling water down your foundation.  Due to the cooling weather, some earwigs will overwinter between your foundation and the soil in your yard as it is a warmer spot to hang out.  If you can catch them there while they're vulnerable, you might have a smaller population to deal with the next year.

If you do decide to trap them, make sure you put traps near your affected plants and put a lot of them out.  Keep checking, emptying, and replacing the traps until you see a noticeable decrease in earwig activity.  And good luck!

I have read that they are attracted to compost and mulch.  This is a problem for me because I am increasing the mulch in all areas of our garden, and just started two compost piles this spring/summer.  I have a feeling that these new ventures may have exacerbated the problem--but I'm not willing to give them up.  So we'll have to see if the other methods work!  I look forward to  attempting to combat this garden foe.  If you have any suggestions for me, please leave them in the comments!!

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #70 on Homestead Revival and Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.

I Made My Own Yogurt This Week

I realize that there are people out there who make their own yogurt (and cheese, and sauerkraut, etc.) without even giving it a second thought.  But to a newbie like me, successfully making yogurt is one of the most exciting things to happen to me lately!  I used instructions for making yogurt in a crockpot, because it sounded like the easiest and least involved way of doing it, and because I don't really use a crockpot all that often; it seemed to help justify it taking up space in my diminutive kitchen.  In the recipe I used, she sweetens at the beginning to end up with sweet, vanilla yogurt.  I wanted to master plain yogurt first, and since I knew I'd end up with quite a bit, I thought that it would be good to make plain and just sweeten it myself later.  That way I'd know just how much I liked, and I could use the plain yogurt for making savoury dishes.

It is so easy that you really should all do it.  All you need is a little patience, and a lot of time.  I know I never really want to buy pre-made yogurt again!  This is so simple, and with so few ingredients, that it seems like the very best way to get that fix of probiotic goodness into your belly.

In general, we've been eating Activia vanilla-flavoured yogurt, which costs $3.99 for 650 grams.  To make my yogurt a few days ago, I used a two-litre carton of milk ($3.49) and some of a 500 mL container of PC brand organic plain yogurt with active bacterial cultures (usually $3.99, but I got it on a great sale for $1.29!  Woohoo!).  I only needed a 1/2 cup of the yogurt, so the rest was eaten by me or went into a yummy recipe of raspberry yogurt muffins.  I ended up with 1.25 L of yogurt, about twice the amount of the Activia container, for $3.81, so saved quite a lot of money.

The necessities.

*Note that I used organic yogurt, but not organic milk.  This is because for the astronomical price of organic milk, you don't get any real, substantial difference in the quality of what you are purchasing.   In Canada, quality controls are so high on milk that there are no traces of antibiotics or any hormones in conventionally produced milk at all.  See this post for a great, quick summary of why non-organic milk is just as good for you.  Also, I think ADL is a super company that I want to support (and considering it is literally right around the corner from my house, you can't get much more local) and I know a number of dairy farmers on PEI who are all awesome people that I would like to support as well.

So as I take you through my yogurt making process, I'm going to give you the time details that I used this time, because it took me a long time to make this and this is something you might want to consider when you decide which day of the week you'd like to give yogurt-making a try.

7:00 am


Put your 2L carton of milk in the crock pot, cover, turn it on low, and leave for two and a half hours.  I used 2% milk to get a creamy but not full-fat version.  I thought it was a compromise between not wanting to get chubby myself, but wanting to feed the kids a hearty yogurt to help them (especially Susannah) put on weight. Apparently you can use whatever milk you like, including skim.

Did you really need this photo?  Probably not, but it adds colour to the post. :)

Another unnecessary but illustrative photo of my hot crockpot, filled with milk, and turned on to the low setting!

9:30 am


Your milk should be good and hot now.  Turn off the slow cooker, unplug it, and leave it without opening for another two and a half hours.

12:00 pm


Come back, take about a cup of milk out of the crockpot and whisk in 1/2 cup of plain, organic yogurt.  Make sure that it has active bacterial cultures in it!  That's what you need to do the work for you of converting your milk into more yogurt.  Stir that milk-yogurt combo back into the milk in the crockpot (make sure it is cool enough so you don't kill the bacteria, it should be between 100 F and 115 F or so, or so that you can comfortably keep the tip of a very clean finger in the hot milk without discomfort).  Once it is all mixed together, put the lid back on the crockpot and wrap a thick towel (I used two) around the whole thing, tucking it in as much as you can to keep the whole shebang as warm as you possibly can.  Leave it like this (no peeking!) for 8+ hours.

9:30 pm


I left mine a little longer than 8 hours, because I had a very important function to attend--our weekly ladies coffee date at Samuel's on Friday evening.  So when I got home, I unwrapped and opened my crockpot to find:

Success!

Yogurt!!

So at this point, you can package it up however you desire as is and stick it in the fridge, or strain it to make it thicker.  I decided to strain mine.

I lined two colanders (one big and one little) with coffee filters, put them over bowls, spooned the yogurt into them, and put them in the fridge for a couple of hours (not too long or it will turn into yogurt cheese, which I have read is lovely but not what you want in your smoothie or on your granola).  

Craig and I watched a (mind-numbing) movie while I waited for this to strain.  When it was done, I came upstairs and...

12:30 am

Took the colanders out of the fridge, scooped and scraped the yogurt out of the filters into clean Mason jars, poured the whey (don't throw it out!) into additional clean mason jars, and ended up with this:

Thick, creamy white yogurt on the right, whey on the left.

Whey can be used for all sorts of things, and I hope to try a bunch of them out and post about it in the future.  I'm planning on using this batch to enrich smoothies and make them probiotic, to substitute for buttermilk in baking, such as pancakes and biscuits, etc., and to substitute for water in bread, which I have heard has great results.

The yogurt, on the other hand:

I tried it on top of homemade granola, sweetened with some honey and a drop of vanilla, and topped with raspberries.  It was really good.  The yogurt itself was pretty tangy, which may be because I left it longer while out with friends.  I never eat plain yogurt, always sweetened and flavoured, so I think it might take getting used to.  But if you sweeten with honey and vanilla, you won't notice any difference except that it is fresher, thicker, and yummier.  And, you'll know exactly what went into it.  I don't think I'll go back to purchased yogurt.  This is less expensive, healthier, fresher, full of probiotic goodness, and very satisfying.

Don't forget to keep a little yogurt to make your next batch!