Certain earwigs are predaceous, and will eat other small garden pests. They are also known to eat decaying plant matter, which helps in composting the garden soil. But some types of earwigs also love living plants, and thus can be quite the pests, especially to young plants and seedlings.

The earwigs in our yard here in Reno seem to be the young plant loving types. This year, they have taken to eating all of our beet sprouts, keeping the beet greens nibbled down practically to the ground. They are also eating the kale leaves, but the kale grows so fast, the earwig nibbles don't seem to harm the plants overall. They seem to leave the nightshades like peppers and tomatoes completely alone. They will eat all sorts of flowering plants, too. We've given up trying to grow lobelia in our garden since in past years, earwigs would literally strip the plant of all vegetation within one or two evenings. We've thought about using lobelia as a sacrifice plant, but wonder if we would simply be inviting the insects to stay.

Earwigs are nocturnal, so you won't see much of them unless you suddenly expose them to sunlight. At night you can go into the garden with a flash light and catch them in the act. Squish them when you see them. Don't worry about the pincers. They don't bite or sting, and only the large males might pinch, but very rarely. They are much more inclined to scurry away when seen. Squish them in you can! Or squirt them with soapy garlic water.

A sure way to greatly reduce your garden's earwig population is to dust the ground just before nightfall with diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth is not a chemical pesticide. The non-poisonous powdered rock acts as an abrasive which dries out the earwig's body, which kills them. You can pick up diatomaceous earth at Dry Creek. The stuff works wonders.

To make your own garlic spray, smash a couple large cloves of garlic with a tablespoon of mineral oil and a squirt or two of liquid dish soap. Let the mixture steep, then mix with a pint of water. Strain well, then fill a pint spray jar with the liquid. If you're worried about burning your plants, you might want to test your spray on a leaf or two. Once your garlic water is ready, go out at night, find them and squirt them! It's fun to catch them by surprise and to watch them fall from the plants.

There are over 500 species in the Papilionidae family. They are found on almost every continent. We are lucky to have nine species as inhabitants of Nevada, including the Two-tailed Swallowtail, pictured here. This is a large butterfly, sometimes with a wingspan of five inches. We see them lingering often this time of year, especially in the back yard where they find more moisture.

In its caterpillar stage, the ash tree leaves are one of its favorite foods. Fully developed adults sip the nectar from many different flowers, including Milkweed, which is the Monarch Butterfly's primary source of nutrition, and other flowering perennials. Besides their beauty, they are also very beneficial, especially with pollination. In both stages of its development, the Swallowtail seems to be a favorite treat of all the backyard song birds.

If you're interested in Nevada's butterflies, check out The Butterfly Site's page on Nevada. You can also find information on how to create your own butterfly garden.

This beautiful little grasshopper is in the garden this morning. I noticed it munching on this fallen grape leaf. I'm impressed that the grasshopper is scavenging a fallen leaf, rather than a leaf still on the vine.

I looked over the area and found no more than this single little green grasshopper, which was encouraging. No indication of a little green grasshopper plague, thank goodness, at least not today.

After snapping this photo, I reached down to see if it would sit on my finger, but its reaction was an amazing hop, springing up into the air completely out of sight.

I've seen many photos of wild song birds with grasshoppers caught in their beaks, so I'll consider this one as possible food for the robin family that lives in the Photinia close by. I'm certainly not going to kill it myself just because it has the audacity to take a few bites from leaves here and there. No, today I welcomed the chance to see a beautiful little green grasshopper.

Aphids are tiny, soft bodied insects that suck plant juices from leaves, stems and flowers. They quickly form colonies and if left unchecked, can do quite a bit of damage to your plants. You might be tempted to buy pesticide poisons to fight your fights, but such chemicals are almost always completely nondiscriminatory when it comes to what types of insects they kill. Who wants to kill honeybees? Who wants to kill Lady Beetles (pictured)? Who wants to kill Praying Mantids? Who wants to risk such chemicals leaching into the ground water to kill earthworms and ultimately to contaminate the water supply?

If you find aphids collecting on your flower plant stems, rub them off with your fingers or spray your plants with a strong enough jet of water to knock the aphids from your plants. And encourage beneficial predator insects into your garden (by not using insecticides) such as Lady Beetles. A single Lady Beetle (Hippodamia convergens) will eat thousands of aphids during its life time!

Considerate gardeners also use home made sprays made with garlic and a tiny bit of Castile soap. Some make tea from other plants known to thwart aphids, such as yarrow, stinging nettle and tomato leaves. There are many solutions that don't involve deadly chemicals. Try this link for more organic suggestions.

According to the experts, there are hardly any naturally occurring honeybee colonies left in the wild. Now almost all colonies are maintained by beekeepers, but even these are threatened. The consensus seems to be that the honeybee is under attack by deadly viruses, the source of which is not completely understood. But the bees have no built in defense to this new threat, so humans need to do all we can to help them survive.

What can we gardeners do? We can stop using pesticides and purchase foods that have not been grown with the use of pesticides! We can plan our gardens and landscapes with plants that attract honeybees. Bees love flowers, so to encourage the bees, make sure you plant a variety of flowering plants that will ensure blooming all season long. Fruit trees are a good source of nectar and pollen for spring. Vegetables, herbs, hollyhocks, foxgloves and all types of sunflowers will keep the bees happy through mid to late summer. Plan for autumn blooming plants like Asters and Chrysanthemums. Drycreek also offers desert wildflower seed mixes.

Other helpful tips: Take up beekeeping. Or at least buy local honey. Its fresher and the purchase supports the local economy. Even in Nevada, there is local honey being produced and sold at market. And if you find a swarm of bees in your yard, don't panic. Don't squirt them with water or spray them with pesticides! Even though it might look like a horror film in the making, swarming bees are relatively passive and not likely to sting, unless you act like a fool. Instead, contact a local beekeeper and swarm collector.

We built this bird house out of old fence planks seven summers ago. The dimensions of the box and the hole were calculated for attracting the Red Shafted Flicker, a local woodpecker and helpmate for keeping the insect populations down during the spring and summer.

Although this bird house was built specifically with the Flicker in mind, it's perch hight is too low, too close to the ground. Each spring, the Flickers find the house, check it out, even go inside to test its comfort and safety, still, none have ever actually set up housekeeping. Next year, perhaps, we'll relocate the house high up in a backyard tree. But that would entail having to climb it!

There are two types of Flickers in North America. The Yellow Shafted Flicker (Colaptes auratus), also called the Yellowhammer, resides in the eastern part of North America. In the west, we find the Red Shafted Flicker (Colaptes auratus cafer). Both are types of woodpeckers and although they will eat seeds, they're great insect eating birds.

In our ever expanding, personal universes it becomes easy to overlook the small galaxies that are all around us. Take, for example, the ground we stand, and walk about on. Put a shovel into it. Remove a perfect clod. (Not to be confused with the clod racing his super loud, super Hemi up the street, spewing foul crap in the atmosphere to rendezvous with other clods in his very small, hopefully shrinking galaxy.)...

I digress. Anywho, Sit your bad ass down on the ground and check out this small galaxy, mostly unaware that it is split from its larger part.

The organisms you're likely to see are classified as macro fauna: Earthworms, slugs, Snails, ants, beetles to name the most obvious. The ones your unlikely to see are meso fauna: Mites, springtails to name a couple. Then we have the micro fauna and micro flora. These include bacteria, fungi, protozoa, roundworms, mycorhiza and more.

All these alien life forms rendezvous in a healthy soil to break down organic matter and create soil structure and maintain their small galaxy.

We humans can disrupt this process by adding too much fertilizer, pesticides and other detritus effectively killing these organisms, essentially killing our soil.

Each of these clods is interconnected with everything else. Each dependent on the other, more or less. Even if we don't quite understand how. Creating an ever-expanding universe reaching infinitely beyond our earth.

Who said you can't grow excellent cabbage in Reno? This beauty was harvested for the Labor Day holiday weekend. It was grown without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers in a raised bed in Reno's famed 'Banana Belt' with morning and early to mid-afternoon sun. The soil was prepared with last year's potting soil, a really good crop of humus from the family compost bin, a good dose of organic chicken manure, and a once a month dry or tea feeding with a high grade, organic vegetable fertilizer.

The cool, wet spring seems to have been very conducive to growing cool weather vegetables this season. This box produced beautiful patchs of Collard Greens, Purple Kale, Leeks and Walawala Onions.

Plants that did not do well in this particular box this season were tomatoes, eggplant, pumpkin, and beans. In past years those plant types have done very well in this space.

Autumn plans are already set for greatly improving the soil of this box for next year's use.

Dishes prepared from this single cabbage plant:

• Magic Vegetable Soup Stock
• Cabbage Leaves Stuffed with Turkey, Fresh Herbs and Organic Quinoa
• Bob's Spicy Coleslaw (Mayonnaise free)
• Steamed Cabbage with Fennel Seeds and Butter

As far as insects are concerned, this cabbage was relatively free from pest damage. There were a few holes in the outeer leaves, but not many. Also found were two small happy and healthy slugs tucked down in the outer leaves of the head. The slugs were served with a fresh lemon side, but there were no takers. Finally, we found a small, disoriented earthworm inside the head. The small earthworm was celebrated and verbally thanked for helping produce such fine humus, then promptly returned to its compost home with a cabbage leaf to eat and lounge on.

Cocktail party conversation recently touched upon the steady and disturbing decline in local, nationwide and even worldwide bee populations. Historically, it's not the first time something like this has happened, but it seems scientists are wondering whether this event -- especially the pollinating season of 2007 -- is the most dramatic die-off to date.

Two years ago several theories debating the cause of the die-off emerged. Is it manipulation of DNA to produce bees more interested in pollinating plants than making honey? Is it new chemicals meant to pollinate plants without the help of bees? Is it new and more deadly pesticides for farms and gardens? Is it the invasion of new parasites as well as the chemicals used to fight the parasites? Is it a virus? Is it the 30 year drought? Global warming? Is it confusion and bewilderment produced by continual shipping from place to place? Is it radiation produced by the ever increasing number of cell phone towers?

From gay marriage to the coming apocalypse, other not so very scientific theories were discussed as well. Still, the question of chemicals returned to the center of conversation more than once. As we sipped our summer cocktails, someone suggested that a pesticide- and chemical-free garden would be a godsend for the troubled bees. "Like an island in a sea of poison. If only we could convince enough people to stop using harmful chemicals, the island could grow." A retort was inevitable: "But, what if chemicals and poisons aren't the only problems? What if it's a disease produced by an accumulation of conditions? No one knows where to begin." A very reasonable suggestion was returned: "Well, maybe we should begin eliminating those conditions one by one. We can start with what we ourselves can control, start with the chemicals closest to us."

Today a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) stopped by this Gay Feather (Liatris spicata -- also commonly called Blazing Stars) before flitting on beyond the garden. The Monarchs stop by this plant as it blooms every summer so far. It's that time of year, both for the fantastic, long blooming season of the Liatris, but also for the Monarch.

Reno and the rest of northern Nevada is part of the Monarch Butterfly's migratory route. Back in the day when Milkweed was plentiful and pesticides scarce, millions of Monarch butterflies would pass through on their long journey to Canada from Mexico. But their numbers have greatly diminished and are dwindling still.

It's easy to make your garden Monarch Butterfly friendly. If you plant perennials that bloom in August, you'll easily attract the adults, as they enjoy the late summer flowering plants, like this beautiful, long lasting Gay Feather. But if you really want your garden to be Monarch friendly, you'll want to plant some Milkweed because the Monarch actually depends upon Milkweed to survive. Why? Because Milkweed is the only known plant the butterfly uses to nurture and feed its young.

We have a page devoted to the Monarch Butterfly. Check it out.

Every time we see a dragonfly we should thank it for the work it does keeping us safe. They love to dine on mosquito larvae and they catch house flies and horse flies in midair.

In our day and age, the largest dragonflies grow to 4 or 5 inches, but these amazing insects have ancestors dating back millions of years. Back then they were huge. In fact, they win the prize for being the largest flying insect ever for the planet earth, reaching up to nearly three feet across! It makes you wonder just how big the misquotes were back then.

Some dragonflies also live for a surprisingly long time. If they are lucky enough to avoid pesticides and water pollution, some species can live for over half a decade.

If you have a pond in your yard, it's a good idea to keep the water pesticide and chemical free, not only for the occasional Western Toads and Spadefoot Toads that might happen by for a summer evening visit, but also for this amazingly beautiful, non-biting insect that does such good work.

The Desert Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos), also commonly called the "Horned Toad" or "Horny Toad," is native to Nevada and other dry western states. Their color and skin varies greatly as they tend to resemble the terrain upon which they live. For example, in environments which are predominately sand, such as the Mojave Desert, skin and markings look like sand; in rocky environments, such as our local Virginia Range, skin and markings look like the surface of the rocks upon which they love to sun themselves.

Horned Lizards usually do not bite and are in fact, quite gentle, although they do not like to be picked up or harassed. They have a strange defense mechanism where, if abused, they can squirt blood from their eyes.

The Horned Lizard dines almost exclusively on ants! When hungry, they typically search out an ant hill, sit quietly waiting for the ants to approach, then snatch them one by one with their long, sticky tongues.

The Horned Lizard is an unfortunate victim of the pet trade. Sometimes, even as far away as the east coast of the US and beyond, they can be found in pet shops, thrown in with other exotic lizards, given crickets to eat. But they don't eat crickets and the particular ants upon which the Horned Lizards feed are not sold in pet shops. And so, these awe inspiring creatures typically starve to death within a matter of weeks or months after capture.