Does anyone have some helpful advice for me? One of my wee oak treelings is covered with galls this year. They're already beginning to turn brown (would swear I read the little wasps won't emerge until December!) and DH is making noise as if he's going to cut them away to "improve" the appearance of the tree.
Should I convince him to wait for the galls to be brown and dry (which will be...December, gee) or can I take them sooner and expect them to produce good dyestuff?
When the galls turn full brown, then they have about as much tannins in them as they ever will. I would not harvest them until they are brown. After it turns brown, the gall is dead tissue - like bark. The wasps finish their development in a cavity inside of the dead galls.
You can cut the galls off, and let the wasps finish their development inside the galls while the galls are all collected in your bag. Or, not. The dye will not care about the wasps, alive or dead.
Or, you can just use the acorns even though they are more effort to grind into a powder. It is the same chemistry.
A nearby open space has a variety of oaks, with many galls that hang on from year to year - a constant supply for me. When dry, they are quite light weight. I would be perfectly willing to gather and ship you a carton of them. Aaron
My vote is for "Or, not." - wasps are nasty little blighters. Do they serve any good purpose?
VP
They serve very good purposes.
But not all wasps are stinging yellowjackets. Those are social wasps, most wasps are solitary - as are the oak gall wasps.
If you're an organic gardener you'll know about biological methods of control. Many of these are wasps so tiny that we can hardly see them but they parasitise what we call 'pests' and kill them without using any pesticides.
Solitary wasps and bees pose no threat to Man.
All wasps do sterling jobs in clearing up things we don't like - mostly other insects which we think of as pests.
Mary
The wasps in the galls I have are desirable wasps as they prey on other bugs I'd rather not have around.
I'll just tell DH to keep his nippers in his...holster. So to speak.
Aaron - I have husks from four kinds of nuts, as well as an unlimited supply of galls if I but bestir myself and go bushwhacking. But thanks for the offer.
Some of us whack bushes for fun, so it is not like I was offering you my first born son or hanks of hand spun, or some thing real valuable : )
Vintage Purls wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:
not *all* wasps! wasps are predatory on other insects, & without wasps gardening would be incredably difficult & the fly problems would be horrid. i'm not a fan of German yellowjackets or baldface hornets, but even those i leave alone if they aren't nesting in an area where our mutual presence will become an issue. lee
I knew I'd wind people up (I was being naughty - sorry).
We get huge numbers of the big, vicious kind here sometimes - in those cases I'm all for hunting down the nest and dealing to them. This generally only occurs when the winter hasn't been cold enough to kill many of them and the numbers get out of control as a result.
VP
Good for you!
Mary
Vintage Purls wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:
around here the yellowjackets are mostly ground nesting. i have a skunk that lives under the chicken barn (& has been there for 6 years now). we allow him to stay because he does a great job finding & eating the ground nests. i'll even forgive him the small amount of catfood he eats during the summer (although i thought inviting his girlfriend to dinner in the barn last spring was a bit cheeky ). the skunks around here don't molest chicks or eggs, so he hasn't been any trouble. lee
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