Monday, June 20, 2011

Garden Center How To: Pests


Warning: This post contains gross photos of fake caterpillars!!!!!



Urgh, I am not crazy about caterpillars. But they are a part of gardening life, aren't they? So we made some.


You know how they are made, yes? String buttons together, separated by seed beads. Good way to use up surplus buttons. The seed beads make the caterpillars realistically wiggly. Ick.


I won't do a tutorial here, because you can find a similar one using felt circles here in the archives.


Speaking of realistic, you can pick natural colors - see?



Scream!!!!!!!!!!! Monarch caterpillar!!!!!!!!!!!! ICK!!!!!!!!!!!

The girls then started to put in requests:

Wait, it gets more ridiculous:


We decided this Rainbow Caterpillar was the Queen of them all - evil beyond description, fatally poisonous and totally merciless to plants and other living things. 

Now, what was the point of making caterpillars? 

Why, so that we could make pesticide sprays, of course!


Although, as Emily pointed out to me, "Caterpillars aren't worms, Mum." To which I muttered, "To you, they're not. I don't discriminate between particular types of wiggly nightmares."


Making these spray cans is very easy. Print out the labels here,




color them, wrap and glue them around toilet paper tubes. We had only one toilet paper tube in the house (I couldn't believe it) so we cut a wrapping paper tube into short lengths. We also glued a circle of paper over the top before sticking the labels on.


Since we didn't want to be prejudiced against animal pests, we also made weed killer so we could persecute the plant pests as well.


Again, these were made the same way as the pesticide cans, except the weed killer was a sprinkling powder and the pesticide was a spray. For the former, we dotted the top and for the latter, we stuck on a circular sticker for a spray button, and made a big dot for the spray outlet. 

Remember, the point of our garden center was to mass-produce stock so we could fill the shelves, so go ahead and make multiples of these! 

Incidentally, our little Kate adored the caterpiggles, as she called them. She lovingly collected them as I finished each one and hoarded them in a small tupperware, away from her sisters. She was traumatized when her sisters tried to exterminate them and screamed, "Don't spray them! Don't spray them!"  and then cried. I didn't know whether to laugh or rescue her. 



P.S. Oh alright, I did rescue her. But when she wasn't looking, I let Emily and Jenna spray them again. 


Next up: Seed packets!

6 comments:

  1. "Caterpiggles" - love it! The seed beads are the perfect touch =)

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  2. I love the caterpiggles!! How DARE you exterminate them! Don't you know they'll turn into beautiful butterflies? ;)

    I was going to include a link to some cool to-make butterflies, but I can't seem to post a comment from my PC (I keep going in circles being sent to log-in), and can't link from my iPad, so I'll email it to you.

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  3. Boah! So cute! I like your caterpillars. I think, I`ve got too take a look in my button boxes.... ;-)

    Greetings from Germany
    Kirsti

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  4. oh my word! way too cute!!! i just found your blog and you have so many cute things on here!!!

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  5. I lurve the caterpillars. Reminds me of your traumatic day:)

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  6. @Serena
    With the roses! Yes. Good thing I had friends to rescue me! How are you doing, S?

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