Hey Lori. Although I see your point, I don't necessarily agree, either. (Although I will disagree in an agreeable way).

Since joining GW, I have more beautiful and a greater variety of plants but short of killing lubbers and controlling a fungus if it gets out of hand (which I always did), I leave the rest to itself. And that is no different than it was before. Thanks to swaps, I hardly spend any money on plants. I don't spend much on pesticides either.

Let yourself and your garden go. Worry less about the bugs and enjoy the flowers.

Melissa

On account of what do you kill Cuban Tree Frogs? Just wondering - The marine toads I understand, but I'd never heard about Cuban Tree Frogs being a problem?

Cuban Tree Frogs are an invasive pest. They've taken the food supply away from our native tree frogs, just as the Cuban Anoles have done to the native Green Anoles. Of course, with man tinkering around with the environment the way we do, it's no surprise that we have problems like these.

Lori - Add one more word to describe your original garden: boring. What you've learned here is that real gardens don't grow in big box stores. Their products have their place, but you need to find other gardeners for true inspiration.

Eileen, Fawnridge is right. The Cuban treefrogs are invasive and terribly destructive to our native wildlife. They eat not only the other adorable native treefrogs, but just about anything they can cram in their mouths, including our native Carolina anoles. (They are becoming more of a problem for them than the Cuban anoles are, since the Carolinas are learning how to avoid the brown anoles.) They will eat baby birds, and even goldfish. BIG goldfish. They have now taken my pond from 12 healthy goldfish to 5 at last count. Almost every day, another one is gone.

I hate these dang frogs about as much as anything I can think of, and kill them every chance I can. I go out at night with a flashlight and my frog guillotine, and hunt them down around the borders of the pond, dispatching several each night. But they are hard to catch, and you can never stay ahead of the tadpoles.

So I now have a new plan. The goldfish are history. I'm going to put cichlids in the pond, and I do believe the frogs will NOT like swimming with THEM. Won't they be surprised when the fish bite BACK!

Marcia

Lori, I'm sort of with Melissa on this one. I don't spray for insects on my plants. Ever. Some get eaten, some don't, but usually I don't mind. I plant a LOT of stuff, and enough survives that it still works, most of the time. I do hand pick lubber grasshoppers off, but I treasure all the caterpillars that come to dine, because I know how beautiful they will be when they morph into butterflies and moths.

Once in awhile (maybe once a year or even less), I might get inspired to use a bit of soap spray, if something I like is taking a hit it might not recover from. But other than that, it's get tough or die time. Anything that needs very much babying gets replaced with tougher plants.

In the beginning, though, it was a learning process to find out what was happy in my yard & zone, and with the type of care I was willing to give it. Maybe you can think of it that way? And as you see which plants are too much work, you can find better choices for your area, perhaps?

Good luck, either way!

Marcia

I understand what Lori is saying. I've stepped on alot of snails, smushed milkweed bugs and canna leaf rollers with my bare fingers. I hate battling mealy bugs. But then I got like Melissa and let it go. Much better.

I too disagree with the OP. My garden is as nice as it is because of GW. I really believe that my backyard has helped sell my house and without GW that landscaping would have costs hundred if not thousands of dollars. I too have seen an increase in bugs but I believe thats because my yard is now attractive to wildlife. I have tons of ladybugs now, my lemon tree is currently being consumed by a caterpillar and I never have milkweed....but I love it.

Not only that but my yard is full of things that I have never seen in big box stores. Sure I have tons of things that have died....but they will always be replaced by the kindness of strangers and friends here on GW.

I have receive so much information from getting involved in GW. Practical stuff that are available on the rest of the web but not on a local,personal experience. Also,I have received so many plants from my new friends. Because of swaps and wanting to share,I have learn to propagate much more than before. I do not kill the friendly bugs with pesticide,they are my allies in combating the bad bugs. Birds also help. I hardly spend any money in my garden. My glass is half full,not half empty. It's all how you look at it.

Felix

my solution to the lubbers is posted in the picture section of the daytona news journal under dog pictures. Organic pest control! must have killed twenty lubbers this year. other than "gator", we leave it all to nature to keep our garden in order.

I meant this as a joke, everyone. I'm so sorry the humor didn't come across. I love GW and am addicted to plant swapping and buying and seeing and such. I'm not big on emoticons but I probably should have filled the original post with them. While what I said is true, I do spend lots of time hunting, I meant it in a light hearted, humorous, tone.
Lori

Lori, lol. I love GW too! I wish I could figure out what is wrong with my cukes though...

Well I got it. lol I didn't think it was a serious rant.

But you also make a point. I never had frangapani cats until I had frangapani. Oleander cats until I had desert roses. Hornworms until I tried tomatoes...so it goes. "sigh"

I was not sure whether you were joking or not....can never tell unless there are smiley faces all over the place :-)

Lori,
Since you didn't end your post "I give up on this whole garden thing!" :o), I figured you were only partly serious but it is an excellent topic worth some discussion among friends. I'm glad you posted it. I have given quite a bit of thought to balance in gardening as well as in life. That is really what it comes down to. Balancing the bugs and the begonias.

Melissa

Lori,
Here is another one for you,when ever I know that a GW
buddy is coming over to visit,I go crazy,trying to get the garden in shape. I hate to have you guys see a mess. But it is so much work that I never get it all done. On a
positive not,it gets me off my behind and do what I've been neglecting.
We are a mess,Lori! ;-)
Happy hunting!
Felix

I know what Lori means, I never had trouble growing vegetables in the ground until I joined GardenWeb and found out how hard it is!!! :>)

I always love this subject and I wonder if it's the areas we live in that we have different experiences. I live on an acre surrounded by neighbors on more than an acre, so there is alot of open land/trees. There is every kind of bug imagineable here and every year I discover something new.

I leave nature alone. I have never sprayed. I literally don't have time for that. I walk by the grasshoppers eating my brugmansias, the strange horned caterpillars that were on one of my roses, etc and let nature take care of it. It always does. I never feed the birds or squirrels and that way, they hunt for bugs and whatever they normally eat naturally. I don't kill any bugs because they are probably predators for another bug.

If a plant loses its leaves, it comes back. This year was the first time I have ever had a real problem with aphids. A ton of ladybugs showed up as well, took care of the problem and left. As for my CTF's, winter last year took care of nearly all of them and I saw alot more green tree frogs this year. That was exciting.

Despite my 'rant' (humorous emoticon here), I agree about leaving things alone. While I've learned HOW to kill things from GW, I have never actually killed...that I know of...yet.(another emoticon here, the sneaky looking one).

I let the cubans live and mate in the pond knowing they're getting the mosquito larvae. I know that when they leave the pond, the snakes will get them, and the cats get the snakes. The things I'm spraying and using systemic's on, don't have any bugs on them that I can see despite all my looking. I'm assuming whatever it is must come out at night. I'm hoping that the systemics and sprays I put on the plants will make it taste bad and whatever it is that's eating them will move on the ex's house and live there instead (wink, wink emoticon here).

And today I am removing two baby brugs from the ground and putting them in pots cause something comes out at night and eats all their leaves, while ignoring the other brug I have in a pot. (quizzical emoticon here asking "what can't climb pots?").

And the last lubber I saw was dismembered and laying in the garage...cats again.
Lori

Lori,

I LOVE your emoticons! They are so much better than the pictures. You are a lunatic.

Melissa

I too like your little descriptions....much easier to understand than same ole smiley face.

you know ~

i actually have some vocabulary skills in emoticons =P
They're easier then you think =)
i guess it's like i keep tryin to tell my mom, just look at it sideways XD

but i digress as always ~
and i have to admit that when i read the title of this thread i had almost an immediate understanding of what it MUST have been!
cause clearly the GW effect Surely means that "well, i have these very simple plants but this thing happened and . .", "i found these really neat lookin s.o.b's but hell if i know what they are . . and how do i grow it anyhow ?!" =[
more importantly (and this is the category that i fall into) "so i had some regular house plants, and got some cuttings from my mom, and stole a cutting from my friend . . . and now i'm stealing cuttings from Everywhere and feel like a herba-clepto-phile (although i do ask permission where/when i can =P ) and i just can't see an end to my desire for Variety in my life!!!"

personally . . . i think all are perfectly acceptable approaches to life (and gardening)
but the latermost seems to be the GW effect for me, i got a little green bug about me lately and was googling everything from orchids to coconuts (de-husked ie:store bought . .i already have a coconut growing, but was curious) and Never to Fail, was GW.
i can't tell you how many googles i put out for menial and semi-advanced things . . . they all wound up here.
so i joined =P
now your stuck w/ me, and my hunger for variety! =D

p.s. we'll talk about pests on some other cloudless day ; )

cowboy--I can't drive by an abandoned house or an empty lot without quickly scanning to see what plants might be there and in need of saving (or would be useful in trading)(laughing with you emoticon here).
Lori

Lori, just so you know...not saying you have to do things differently, but explaining why I do...it's my understanding that Cuban treefrogs do not eat mosquito larva, not even as tadpoles. They are primarily vegetarian until they become frogs and they aren't froglets for more than about 2 days before they begin to eat much larger things than mosquitoes or their larva. Also, I understand that very few snakes will eat them. That's one of the reasons they have become so invasive...practically no natural predators here. My dogs chase them all over, but refuse to eat them when they finally get one. (And this from animals who will eat their own droppings!!!)

I am pretty much a "live and let live" kind of gardener. I don't care if things chew on my plants (within reason). I hardly ever kill them. I don't care what the snakes eat, because it balances out, mostly. I love the big obnoxious birds (jays and grackles) as much as the cute little ones. Squirrels and possums have free reign in my yard, in spite of tearing things up from time to time. But I do kill the CTF's and I just wanted you to know why, so you wouldn't think I was crazy for doing so. When they quit eating my Carolina anoles, and I see some native green treefrogs appearing again, I'll retire the froggie guillotine.

When they are eradicated from areas, the natives start returning, and life is good again. In the meantime, for me, it's WAR.

Marcia **making a silly grinning face here :o)**

Marcia wrote: (And this from animals who will eat their own droppings!!!)

OMG!!! I have your dog's cousins....

:-D

Does anyone have a picture of this invasive frog? I don't know if I have seen the Cuban tree frog. I know there are a couple of frogs that hang out above my gazebo door.

if nothing kills these frogs, where do they all go? I have this little "pond" (old spa actually) and I must get hundreds and hundreds of tadpoles at a time, about three times a year. There are no fish or anything in the pond that eats them so they all grow up. On the day they leave the pond, it's little bitty red frogs everywhere. Then, within a day or two, you never see a single one again. Something has to be getting them or I'd be living with thousands of them by now. I take care of a colony of cats, but even they don't bring me many frogs, mostly snakes. So there has to be something out there doing them in, what is it if it's not the snakes? UV?
Lori

Lori, I used to tell people the tadpoles grew up and moved to L.A. I don't know where they go. We're totally inundated by lizards and you'd think whatever ate the frogs would eat the lizards too.

Lori, I've never seen a red cuban treefrog. I'm wondering if you aren't hatching out little toads of some sort. While toads are terrestrial rather than aquatic, they DO lay their eggs in water. And I suspect there are plenty of things that eat them. Just a possiblity?

Sharbear, I have pictures of them which I will post later on. I have to go watch crazy dancing people on tv now. *grin* Can't miss my fix of EITHER of the dancing shows currently running (competing) with each other. Between Dancing With The Stars (for general amusement) and So You Think You Can Dance (for amazing talent), I'm JUST HAPPY this season.

Back with photos later! Or you can Google the Florida forum for them and probably pull up old links. They are hard to ID when they are smaller, but when they are grown...ICK. They are NOT cute.

Back later!

Marcia

Check out this excellent link with great info about CTFs and color photos .
There are also links embedded in this site for even more frog facts .
The author refers to ' humanely eliminating Cuban treefrogs '. A brick works great for me !

Here is a link that might be useful: Cuban Treefrogs