MAKIN’ SPIDER SENSE
No, spiders aren’t out to get you — they’re just looking for the bugs in your home
Q : I hate spiders. I get more and more of them in my house each year. I even bought some of those things that are like bumpy green citrus-smelling fruit, called “spider chasers.” I paid almost five dollars apiece for them at the farmers’ market and they don’t work. Why do I get so many spiders in my house? They know I hate them.
A : You are making yourself the center of this problem when you are not. Spiders don’t think about you. You are not the target of a coordinated fiendish attack.
Let’s use logic and common sense to solve this. Spiders feed on insects. If you are finding many spiders living large and well fed, this means they are finding insects for dinner. If insects are getting into the house, there are cracks and crevices on the exterior of the house to squeeze through. Think of predatory spiders as “following the fleet.” They are getting through the same openings as the insects.
This means you need to look at and repair any cracks or openings around doors or windows. Any place that the exterior of the house has been cut into there could be openings. Caulking or weather sealing may need to be replaced. Your insects and their spiders can get through a crack no wider than the thickness of a credit card. Somewhere you have an old card you could use as a “feeler gauge.” Doing this means good cards could get damaged, so find an old one and toss it into your home repair kit basket or drawer.
If you live near a lake or a big body of water, you will see more spiders because those locations also attract insects.
The obscenely expensive “spider chasers” you purchased are the fruit of the Osage orange tree. Michigan is the northern range of where they grow. But you’re right — they do not repel spiders. They are only good at chasing spiders if you use them as little bowling balls and strike at a wandering arachnid.
Osage orange fruit are often found for sale for this purpose because people want them. They don’t come with any possibility of success — the sellers are just giving people what they want.
Q : Last summer, I grew some pumpkins, gourds and acorn squash in my garden. I saved the seeds and grew them this year. Every fruit looked like it was deformed. I could not identify any pumpkins, gourds or squash. I kept the seeds separated and did not mix them when I planted them. Was this a virus or disease
that caused this garden of freaks? Is there something wrong with the dirt?
A
: The problem is genetics. All your vegetables belong to a family called cucurbits. It’s a huge family with pumpkins, winter and summer squash, cucumbers, gourds and melons being often grown members.
Many are what’s called “open pollinated.” The bees get to swap pollen between the flowers for fruit to be made. Since the plants are closely related, the fruit that is created is a mixand-match of your cast of characters’ genes. Obviously, if mom was a pumpkin and dad was a gourd, the resulting kid is part of each. That’s how your freakazoids were created.
The first year you planted your purchased seeds from a grower, each already contained the genetic material to make pumpkins, gourds and acorn squash. They bred true to what they were. But, the second generation, which were the seeds inside of the fruit, ended up being a cocktail shaker of genes from other cucurbits you grew in the garden. Fruit was produced but it was freaky fruit.
Seed companies make sure that no members of the same family of vegetables are planted anywhere close to other members. When you tear open that packet of Atlantic Giant pumpkins, that is all you are getting. In your garden.