Things that make bumps in the night

So here's an embarrassing challenge.

MacGyver and I have woken up over the past couple months with periodic rashes of bug bites.  This sort of coincided with a camping trip at Mammoth lakes for some pre-wedding logistical planning, but what with the camping itself, we didn't think much of it.  Plus bed bugs were like a "climb-into-your-suitcase-at-questionably-high-traffic-hotel" thing to us.  So we thought maybe it was mosquitoes, what with all the rain and subsequent standing water we've had.  Those typically come with annoying buzzing in ears and I tend to be pretty immune/fast to recover from mosquito bites (what with it being Minnesota's state bird).  These bites lasted for at least a week.  Plus after diligently sleeping under a mosquito net for a couple nights, we continued to get bit.  We thought it might be bed bugs, but searched in vain for some evidence of them.  We HEPA vacuumed the bedroom mercilessly and subjected bedding to hot washing and extended sojourns in the dryer.  Even then, the bites came back.

Fitful sleep and super itchiness aren't exactly a recipe for marital bliss or productive recovery for ironman training or recuperation from long hours of coding crunch.  So we escalated our measures.

We have some advantages-- while not minimalists, we haven't filled too many corners of our house with excessive clutter we would then need to scrutinize for bug harborage.  We have hardwood floors which are pretty easy to clean when compared to carpets and freshly refinished and sealed so fewer places for bugs to crawl into undetected.  We also have 2 guest beds and seldom actually host guests.  The spacious unoccupied second level could be used as quarantine.  Our current mattress is nearing 7 years of service which many [mattress purveyors] would say is end of life, so we weren't too upset with the prospect of letting it go.

We also had some disadvantages.  We have brown flannel sheets which are tough to scrutinize for tell-tale evidence of blood stains, frass, and discarded exoskeletons.  We have a "captain's bed" bedframe where a wooden bench substitutes for a box frame and has a bunch of built-in drawers underneath.  Turns out these are incredibly difficult to clean/hunt for bugs/isolate oneself from bugs in, even if not brimming with stuff.

First, I hit up the research to avoid reinventing the wheel-- Here's the most comprehensive PDF I've come across.


Shopping List

• 2 mattress encasement (mattress and box springs)
• Climb Up monitors
• White Sheets
• Bedlam Bed Bug spray [optional so far]
• Reading pillow [splurge]

Already had--

• Minimalist mattress frame (guest bed)
• Spare mattress/box springs (guest bed)
• Spare comforter and duvet cover (guest bed)
• Diatomaceous earth 
• Baking Soda
• Antihistamine
• Essential Oils [optional]
• Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up book

Treating Bites.  I started with the baking soda + water topical paste approach on webmd.  Since I had essential oils lying around, I threw some in which didn't smell objectionable based on what non-peer-reviewed websites endorsed for soothing/anti-inflammatory properties.  On particularly itchy days, I took some left over antihistamine.  

War Zone Triage.  I waited until Amazon had delivered all the components to avoid the enemy infiltrating our partial measures.

1. Remove current sheets, etc.  Wash on HOT cycle, dry on HOT cycle, dump into trash bag and move to a room we don't spend much time in.  
2. Drag questionable mattress to the part of the yard that is acting as our dump staging area.  If you're inclined to move your mattress to the curb, you probably want to label it so others don't opportunistically pick it up and perpetuate the cycle.  
3. Vacuum and move captain's bedframe to unoccupied floor of the house.  We will probably dump this eventually, but it was way too much material to leave out in the dump staging area. 
4. Completely vacuum bedroom floors and furnishings
5. Encase "clean" guest room mattress and box springs in bed bug encasement.  We did this before moving the mattress into the war zone.  
6. Move minimalist mattress frame (just frame on caster feet) into bedroom.  Make sure the mattress is totally clear of the wall so there is no way for them to climb up the wall to get at you (this sucks if you like having a headboard to lean against for reading...)  Put each of the frame's feet in a Climb Up monitoring trap.  Line the interior catch basin with diatomaceous earth so that after the buggers fall into the pitfall zone they can't climb out of, they will get eviscerated by tiny sharp silica bits of earth.  mwahaha.  
7. Add encased box spring and mattress.  Add white sheets for easier monitoring.  Add replacement comforter and duvet (we ran these through the dryer on high for a cycle just in case).  
8. Wait... Busy bodies can bide their time by working through Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and capriciously throwing out 2/3 of their clothes because they don't "bring you joy" and might be creating extra harborage for critters.  This feels hugely liberating until you realize you need to do laundry every other day in order to not alarm the neighbors by cavorting around naked while waiting for the super hot dryer cycle to liberate your only T-shirt...  

We are 2 weeks into step 8 with no new bites.  We found one insect husk of bed-bug-like proportions in the diatomaceous dust of one of the monitoring traps, which might allow us to infer what direction they are coming from. Although a single bug is not a very significant sample size and we have recently substantially refactored potential harborage spots by removing the old bedframe, mattress and sheets.  They say these things sometimes feed as infrequently as on monthly basis, so I guess we keep waiting, biding our time while letting the stranded ones starve upstairs or at the dump.  If by some strange turn of events we did find a harborage of bugs somewhere, we have 2 cans of bedlam we can use to spray them.  It seems bedbugs are becoming an every man problem in part because there is so much indiscriminate spraying of pesticides and these resistant survivors are passing their genes onto the next generation.

This is not exactly the most romantic of accommodations, but so far it seems to be working.  I feel like we may have lucked out since folks say it is *very* expensive to treat bed bugs, just getting a bug-sniffing canine to help determine whether you have diagnosed the bites right might run $1,500.  So far, things seem to be under control with about $100 of stuff and we've got the side-benefit of streamlining the amount of stuff we own.

**5/29 update** 4 weeks later and we have pushed the bed back against the wall, stabilizing it greatly for "reading."  No new bites or bug evidence thus far.  Also, splurge reading pillow works great for propping up whichever spouse is most afflicted with congestion of head colds.

Seedlings

After spending some quality time under Lara Hughey's tutelage volunteering at the San Pedro garden church I sprung for my own styrofoam seedling starting tray.  I couldn't find them at a local garden shop and $31 I paid for them through Amazon seemed steep.  These seem sturdier than the plastic trays I've tried to use of seasons past that got brittle in the sun or too floppy when full of just watered soil.  Since I had a bunch of warm season veggie seed packets languishing on the back porch, I decided to start some experiments.  Each cell in a row has a different variety of seed in it.  I add 2 additional rows every weekend so that the plants will be at different maturity levels to prolong harvest.  The knives mark what row I've filled up to and the start+end of the bean section.

Here are some notes on performance so far (moving into week 5) reading the cells from left to right.  If I'm super organized, maybe I will come back to this post to keep adding updates.    

Tomatoes-- 

Riesentraube (Baker Creek "free gift").  A disappointment so far, none have sprouted.  There are a bunch of volunteer tomatoes in the aquaculture bed and the side yard to pick up Risentraube's slack.


Zucchini--

Black Beauty is coming along nicely.  It is starting to show its first characteristically squashy leaf rather than just those initial 2 cotyledons.

Gray Zucchini hasn't germinated yet at all.  These were pretty old, much abused seeds, so this is not entirely a surprise.

Cucumber--

Lemon Cucumber seems like it will be the leggier variety.  Its sprouts are about a half inch taller than the Bush although it is at the same stage of leaf out.

Bush Champion has a more erratic germination rate going on so far.  One cell had 0% germination, the other had 100% (all 3 seeds).  So they may be shorter because it is 3 plants using the resources of one cell.  It could be they are a year older than Lemons (packed for 2015 vs. 2016).

Melon--

Kajari is one of the most exciting front runners.  It has the highest germination so far (4/6 seeds from week 1) and they are taller than the Lemon cucumbers.  These should hopefully yield pretty striped melons that taste like honeydews.

Squash--

Table Queen acorn squash seems to be reluctantly starting a single sprout of the 6 originally planted.

Beans-- the instructions suggested soaking these for a couple hours prior to planting, so that was what I did.  It helps that almost all of them look distinctive from each other so you can soak several in the same container without worrying about which is which.

Purple Podded Pole fastest to sprout and has shot up the highest of the bean section.

Golden Wax has made slightly less progress when compared to Calima, but like the Bush cucumber, this may be due to erratic germination and 2 seedlings sharing a cell.

Calima Bush is showing promise as the most vigorous of the bush beans and may give purple pole a run for its money.  Evidently we pick these at pencil thickness or less.

Red Swan hasn't sprouted at all yet :(

Dixie Speckled Butterpea (lima) Lima's seem to sprout faster than typical bush beans.  Dixie seems to be more prone to rot or damping off, but the 1 seedling that is established is the most mature developmentally of the 2 lima varieties.

Henderson's Bush (lima) seems to have a higher germination rate than Dixie, but may take a little longer to get going.

Watermelons-- like gray zucchini, these were all in the tiny plastic hand labeled seed packets that lead me to believe I purchased them a long time ago (when seeds were novel and I was organized) and have not conscientiously stored them in a cool dry place.  Fortunately, a lot of them still sprouted.
Black Diamond is middle of the pack with 2/6 germination and developmentally, they're all in relatively similar sized cotyledon stage.  Baker creek claims these can get pretty big.  

Black Seeded Ice Cream has the lowest germination of the watermelons (1/6).  Baker creek claims these store well into winter.

Blacktail Mountain has highest germination of the watermelons (3/6).  They seem the leggiest, but they are at the end that gets extra shade so they may have to be in order to grow.  Baker creek claims they are one of the earliest melons at 70 days, so they may just be early bloomers.