We offer a couple more video sprog segments with the much enlarged silkworms. It won’t be long before they’re spinning cocoons (we’re guessing — and the mulberry trees are hoping), so these may be the last of their baby videos:
Category Archives: Critters
Friday Sprog Blogging: bigger silkworms (part 1).
Those wee little silkworms which you saw in videos last week are growing at an impressive rate.
Here, see for yourself:
Snail eradication (day 6).
This morning’s garden foray was weird.
Where were all the gastropods?
Snail eradication (day 5).
Today, I may have picked slightly more slugs than snails. And, in the process of acquainting myself with the ways of the slug, I discovered a very good reason to perform early-morning gastropod removal as a solo activity:
Snail eradication (day 4).
This morning, it seems like the pickings were somewhat slimmer.
How does salt melt snails?
In light of our recent snail eradication project:
Why does salt “melt” snails and slugs? (And how do people manage to prepare escargot without ending up with a big pot of goo?)
To answer this question, let us consider the snail as seen by the chemist:
Snail eradication (day 3).
Today was the first school day of our snail eradication project. This meant I had to get out to the yard a bit earlier (just after 6 AM), and that I had a fairly limited time to pick slugs and snails before I needed to get inside to propel the sprogs school-ward.
Snail eradication (day 2).
This was another early morning out in the garden picking snails. It was, however, markedly yuckier than yesterday’s foray.
Snail eradication (day 1).
The most troublesome invasive species in my backyard garden is the snail.
Yesterday morning, when I took out the buckets of shower-warning-up and vegetable-rinsing water to feed to my plants, I was horrified to find snails on my carrots, snails on my chard, snails on my potatoes, snails on my garlic, and especially snails on my tender pea plants.
The strawberries that were starting to get nice and red? Shot through with slugs (which are basically snails without the convenient handles).
On top of our wee little lime tree? Snails copulating.
This is not a situation conducive to effective gardening. Thus, the sprogs and I mounted an early (for a Saturday) morning raid on their dewy, shady stomping (sliding?) grounds.
Today’s take: in excess of 500. (We lost count.)
Friday Sprog Blogging: meet the silkworms (part 2).
Here’s some more video footage of the Free-Ride silkworms, with color commentary from the Free-Ride offspring.
Let me note here that as “pets” acquired as the elementary science classroom winds down for summer, silkworms are pretty agreeable. As long as you have a stable source of mulberry leaves and keep feeding them, they seem pretty content. Another animal in our science classroom that is looking for a summer home is a Madagascar hissing cockroach. The handout from the science teacher says he eats romaine lettuce and cat food. Talk about a hard sell!