Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The six sticky traps guarding Mary’s onion beds in her Vassar Community Gardens plots collected this assortment of critter and mulch from mid-July through mid-August, when she harvested the last of the crop:
VCCG Onion Maggot Trap A
VCCG Onion Maggot Trap B
VCCG Onion Maggot Trap C
VCCG Onion Maggot Trap D
VCCG Onion Maggot Trap E
VCCG Onion Maggot Trap F
The labels do not match those on the first set through mid-July, because I don’t care quite enough to keep track of them.
The traps don’t collect many onion maggot flies, which suggests that a little control goes a long way. As far as she’s concerned, these traps work very well, because the crop has very little maggot damage.
Searching for onion sticky traps will produce the rest of the collection. Contact me for the full resolution images, should you need to ID all the critters.
It lacks the flange required to seal the O-ring against the outside of the bin, but I can fix that:
Can-o-worms – sleeved valve
It’s a chunk of PVC pipe faced to the proper length, bored to fit the valve body, then gooped in place with acrylic caulk.
Snug the nut inside the bin and it’s all good:
Can-o-worms – new valve installed
The original valve depended on having a smooth plug turning inside the outer shell, but years of grit scarred the interface enough to produce a slow drip. It also had the annoying mis-feature of aiming the opening inward, between the bin legs, where a jug didn’t quite fit.
The water heater valve depends on compressing a smaller O-ring against a seat inside the body, which may tend to clog with crud. We added a mesh filter to hold back the worst of the gunk, so this is in the nature of an experiment using free hardware.
Chipmunks zip into drain pipes when they detect even a slight threat:
Chipmunk peering from drainpipe
When I installed the drain pipes for the gutters & retaining wall along the driveway, I added a grate plug to keep critters from setting up housekeeping in what must look like an extensive cave network, although later experience showed I must clean debris out of the plug more frequently than I expected:
Driveway drain – fountain
I didn’t glue the PVC pipes together, because I knew they’d need adjusting, so it was no surprise when the last section of pipe shifted enough to open a small gap, probably because my lawnmowing passes always proceed from right to left over the pipe:
Chipmunk Refuge – shifted drain pipe
The front yard chipmunk immediately claimed the pipe and zipped into the opening whenever we met on my way to the mailbox.
When I reconnected the pipe, the chipmunk knew something had gone wrong and started some exploratory excavation in about the right spot to find the missing tunnel entrance:
Chipmunk Refuge – missing gap
Not being one to rebuff the humble, I decided to make the world better:
Chipmunk Refuge – site overview
It’s a short section of PVC pipe with a wood plug in the far end to keep what I grandly call “our lawn” from filling it up. I bandsawed a disk from a scrap of inch-thick lumber that used to be a door and introduced it to Ms Belt Sander often enough to make it a snug push fit in the pipe.
Some decoration seemed in order:
Chipmunk Refuge – decorated end plug
Which gives the place a nice, homey look:
Chipmunk Refuge – installed
Now, we’ll see whether the critters enjoy it as much as I did.
The only reason we haven’t seen a standing raccoon is because we’re not awake when it happens:
Raccoons vs wheelbarrow – 2023-06-09
The glowing dot over on the far right is a third raccoon!
They are athletic critters:
Raccoons in wheelbarrow – 2023-06-09
Mary puts garden clippings in the wheelbarrow before hauling them over the hill to our organic dumping ground. Something must smell pretty good in there:
Raccoons around wheelbarrow – 2023-06-09
The wire mesh over the new plantings in the garden seems to be holding them at bay, but it must come off before it snares the growing plants. We hope whatever is in the fertilizer will have worn off by then!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 