Welcome back everyone to the Evac Gardening Podcast.

I hope you're doing well.

Kevin is spirit to here.

Amy Bauer is joining us again from the East Coast Zone 6A.

Remember she used to live in Zone 10B much like myself in Santa Monica, California.

Now she's in Massachusetts.

Amy you did mention and I've been seeing on your Instagram almost a paranoid tirade if you will about the the pests and in particular one pest that you're you're quite afraid of I am to actually just don't have as many of them out here.

So can you share a little bit before we get to that big one, why don't we actually just talk about some of the garden pests that that you used to suffer with in 10B and some of the new ones in 6A.

Yeah so in 10B we're pretty fortunate because again we were to actually have in the middle of Santa Monica so like not rural at all we are right by the 10 right by the beach like the most we had was I think we had some possums digging around sometimes we had neighborhood cats that like to use our some of our beds as a litter box sometimes and we had the infamous rap gate where I couldn't figure out what we were doing.

What was eating my vegetables we set up like a nighttime camera we set up our ring camera like in the garden and realize that we were having a essentially like a rat rat party every night and they were just going to town so a lot of vegetables I lost that season.

So just like I'm not messing around with rats they had the frickin bubonic plague no so that sort of was a I don't know how they eventually left maybe one of the neighborhood cats scared them off but yeah they they did make actually I know what happened I think there was a lot of construction around where we used to live and maybe they disturbed a rat which sound horrible.

So maybe they just moved on to greener pastures and only made a short visit to our garden but yeah not too far away of test to a really complain about in Santa Monica okay and then so now you've had at least a little bit of a growing season over in Massachusetts so have you experienced any big annoying ones I mean the rehab knocking wood not a ton we have two bunnies that live under our deck who I'm hoping that I have enough time to do that.

I have to report with them and we're sort of bud I'm hoping they don't eat my vegetables and that we're kind of cool the garden is also far enough away that I think that if they make a great like a beeline there's just a lot of hawks and it might be too dangerous for them so you have bunnies we have a wood check that like scamp around and I've heard tell that he is fond of vegetable gardens and butternut squash in particular so we'll see what happens there.

We have some deer but the garden is sent in I'll be it's probably like you know three foot high fencing and then while it's not a vegetable garden past per se it is before most past in my mind right now they're not it's not like we have a huge issue with them but I didn't even know to be aware of them and those are picked specifically deer ticks.

I don't even know where to start like we move here in the fall apparently there's sort of active year round now just because of climate change but I shudder to think that I was sort of like galvanthing willy nilly through the brush and through this tall like ornamental grass that we have basically like kickville and I didn't even know about them until this spring when you're gardening one day I came in the

side and in a very calm composed manner I started screaming pressure there's a tick on me there's a tick on me there's a tick there's a tick and I like rip my sweatshirt off where he got the tick off rip my sweatshirt off and then I proceeded to go upstairs and shower and I was just like from that point on it's it's been ticks are the top of my mind and I hate them so much but there are things that I've been doing to a

you know to mitigate yeah to mitigate well I was going to say it for those of you who don't follow Amy on Instagram up first of all I suggest doing it but second of all it has been weirdly funny to watch your almost decline into tick matters yeah it's just I don't know it's just sort of watching someone slowly lose it but I actually completely understand it because I didn't have like this is a completely unrelated story but I had someone bring bedbugs into my

apartment once when I lived in a different place and that for sure was the most like neurotic I ever became was dealing with that because you had to hunt it down and like it's not as bad as ticks for sure but it's just so gross and all this and so what what what have you been doing for the

ticks is there anything you really can do yeah well yeah there are so what I'm learning is that um there are a lot of people in the same boat and a lot of people have sent really

on like super helpful suggestions because I couldn't even I made it my husband start researching because I was you know researching ticks and how to

mitigate them on your property and I was just like too anxious about them to even look at them because it was just

fueling my slow descent into like crazy bell about ticks so a couple of thanks you've been doing but um the

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