Two-spined spider in action

One of the reasons I couldn't find any information that would have helped identify the two-spined spider which I had found in my garden was that I thought, without any doubt, that the bug was immobile. I never saw it moving until the night after I finally knew what it was.

As two-spined spiders are nocturnal, I got out at night to see what the spider in my garden was doing. It was a spider in deed, with legs moving, hanging on a web it was making.

Two-spined spider

This is to follow up my previous post on Saturday.

The creature turned out to be a two-spined spider. After searching for information about it for several days, I gave up doing it on my own and inquired about it through an online inquiry form at Landcare Research New Zealand website this morning. Then, only a few hours later I received a reply as follows:

The bug in your picture is a two-spined spider, Poecilopachys australasiae (Griffith & Pidgeon)
It is an Australian one but not a problem. In fact it is considered beneficial as it catches moths and small insects which could be a problem in gardens and orchards.

It's good to know what the bug is and that it is not harmful, but what I am more grateful for is the responder's quick and kind response.

What's this?

I found a strange looking insect on a leaf of my kaffir lime tree. What is this? It looks really bizarre...

Buttercup squash

I make compost from food scraps using Bokashi. Usually you use a large black compost bin to make compost at home, but, with Bokashi, you only need a two-layered bucket system as small as ordinary plastic buckets.

One day I found some spouts shooting up from the soil, underneath which I had buried Bokashi compost for fermentation. At first I didn't know what they were but about a week later I realised that they were buttercup squash.

As I had never grown buttercup in my garden, I decided to wait and see how they grew. Before long, some yellow flowers began to bloom, but I still didn't know what to do, so I again decided just to wait and see. Several days later I found a flower with round ball-shaped bottom, which I reckoned a female flower. Remembering that we failed to grow watermelon a couple of years ago, I quickly pollinated it using a brush.

The pollinated flower shrank and fell soon. But, the round bottom of the flower grew bigger and came to look like a squash.


Baby squash - 5 January

The baby squash kept growing until it became about 10cm in diameter. Although I hoped it would keep growing, it didn't, so I finally decided to harvest it.

Voila!!


My first squash - 17 February