REB 133: Bugs You Want Around Your House!

Few things make people's skin crawl like creepy crawly bugs.  Some bugs, however, should be welcome guests.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, my friends, welcome back to Real Estate Bites. This is episode 133. Uh, hey, I want to introduce you to this guy. This ugly son bitch right here is called an earwig. Now, that thing looks terrifying, but do not be afraid of them. All right, well, let me let me step back in. This is for anybody who would be a gardener or would like to do maybe a touch of homesteading and grow their own produce in the backyard that they and their family are going to eat, right? If you've got raised beds or flor or any sort of little garden where you're growing produce for your family, you want to see these things. Now, you don't want them overpopulate, but you want to see these things. And the reason why is because the earwig is a predator and it eats aphids, mites, uh insect larvae, uh, you know, insect eggs, the all the things that you don't want in your garden, that guy takes care of. The cool thing about an earwig is they are naturally occurring. You don't need to go find earwigs and populate your garden with them. They will naturally occur. If you have a mulch layer or something that holds in moisture in your garden bed, you're going to find earwigs. So when you harvest that first head of romaine lettuce and this guy comes crawling out of there, don't freak out. What you have is a healthy ecosystem. Now, the thing about the earwig is it's also an omnivore. So, yeah, it's a predator and it eats those things, but it is an omnivore. And so if there is a lack of food or overcompetition for food, they will take advantage of the fact that they will nibble into your fruits, they will eat seedlings and saplings. Um, so if that starts to happen, if you start to notice the earwigs getting inside of your fruit, then you just want to reduce the population of them. And you can use rolled-up newspapers, you can use uh oil traps um or simply reduce the moisture content. Those are great ways to get the population of earwigs down. But having earwigs is a good thing, right? They look awful, they look terrible, but earwigs are great in your garden. And again, this is something that you don't introduce them into your garden. They will just show up somehow like magic to take care of stuff. And you want bugs in your garden, you want bugs in your lettuce and your tomatoes and all this kind of stuff because the alternative is to spray your garden down with a bunch of chemicals, thereby possibly contaminating them, potentially, you know, ruining some of the organic uh, you know, attributes of your garden produce that you really want it for. I mean, I you know, I used to garden. I used to have uh some raised beds, and I grew some delicious romaine lettuce and squash and zucchini, and it just it got too much for one person to take on. As my work and professional life got busier and busier and busier, I had less time to tend to my garden and I eventually stopped. But I knew about these guys because it freaked me out the first time I shook out a head of romaine lettuce and uh and a couple of these guys fell out. Uh, and so I researched what are these ugly things, and and this is why I learned about earwigs. Uh, so there are other bugs that are not nearly as ugly that you can actually purchase in a store and introduce them into your garden. Uh, the ladybug, common ladybug, and the thing on the right is the lace wing. These things are sold commercially because they specifically go after aphids and other larvae that tend to chew up your plants, right? So you can go and buy ladybugs and lace wings and introduce them into your garden. Problem is with both these creatures is they have wings and they may fly away, right? If the food sources diminish, if they do their job very, very well, they might take off. Um, typically they're gonna stick around because where you have your gardening, other insects that want to eat up your plants and your produce are gonna show up to try to do just that. So you're always gonna have a population of these. But the earwig, I'll tell you what, too. Every time I look at this, I can't help but remember this. Anytime I see the earwig, I think of the Rathokon in that in that scene. Um so again, you want these in your garden. Don't be scared of these terribly ugly little creatures. They're super efficient. What it means when you see these in your garden is you have a healthy ecosystem. The introduction or the presence of earwigs, maybe introducing ladybugs or lace wings, this is going to create a healthy ecosystem where your produce grows healthy with uh a controlled mechanism for controlling pests that will destroy your garden, right? Obviously, these things aren't taking down deer or groundhogs, but that's what you get natural barriers for. But the little insects that will eat up your produce, you want this guy around. You want the earwig around, you want ladybugs and lace wings around. Um, so just a nice helpful little tip for any of you guys who are gardening or would or would be gardeners who are considering homesteading. As food prices continue to increase, I've talked to more and more customers and clients, friends and family who really want to start to grow in their backyard and supplement their diet with healthier organic food that comes out of their backyard to supplement their bank accounts by not having to spend crazy amounts of produce prices on produce. Another thing, too, um the cost of food is going to go up, okay? And a big reason why is uh you know, the the war that's going on in Iran. Um a lot of fertilizer is to come through the Strait of Hormuz. A lot of fertilizer is not going to get to its destination. And to give you an idea of the timeline of these things, fertilizer, oil, whatever, LNG that's coming through the Strait of Hormuz, um, of which there's a significant amount. If you've been paying the attention to the news, you know a significant amount of these materials pass through that strait. It takes between six and ten weeks to reach their designation. So the constrictions that have happened for fertilizer specifically is what we're talking about right now. It's going to take weeks and weeks before we realize not only that the fertilizer is not getting to the farmers who need it, but then the crop yields that are diminished because of the lack of fertilizer getting to these farmers will take weeks to realize after that. So in the next two to three months is when we're going to see this effect happening in food prices. So it's going to happen in the produce that you buy at the store, but then conversely, it's also going to happen with the meats that you buy because the fertilizer that is being purchased to raise the produce that is being fed to the cows or the chickens or whatever it might be, right? That's going to have a tertiary effect there. So prices are going up. People see this, people are feeling it. There's the initiative of wanting to eat healthier foods and then wanting to save money on produce. A lot of people are interested in getting into gardening. That's why I did this one. These bugs that I'm showing you right here: the ladybug, the green lace wing, and the earwig are your friends. Don't freak out, don't try to get rid of them. Don't use chemicals to kill these things. Don't use insecticides. You want to see these bugs in your garden. They're helping your garden stay healthy. All right, so that is the topic for today. Let's move into some quick stats and then the big sale of the week. Let me share my screen here. All right, there we go. Here we are. Episode 133. There were 428 homes at single family and condos for sale in Lorraine County as of this morning. So again, we still are battling all-time low inventory. There were 81 homes sold last week. Median square feet of home sold last week was 1,780 square feet. Median purchase price, $285,000. Median square foot value, $173.37. Look, guys, the correction we saw over Q4 of 2025, and then it stayed steady in Q1, 2026. I think we're coming out of that. We are seeing, I mean, this is the last four weeks, right? So the average median square foot value was $167.60. We are well above that the first four weeks of Q2 2026. We're watching home prices stay stable as they were last year, maybe inch up a bit, a bit, and a bit. Nice big beautiful home. This is what you get for $890,000 in Avon Lake. This house is over on Brandon Place. You know, beautiful woodwork, beautiful floors, everything you would expect. Nice flowing open concept. You know, this natural woodwork. Um you know, the natural colors went out of style there for a bit. I think it's coming back, folks. I really do. You know, there's there's a timeless beauty in in in natural wood finishes. Big beautiful master, the trade ceilings. It's nice. All the all the other bedrooms have their own private baths. It's always fun. Mostly finished basement. That's it, folks. What was that? A sauna? Beautiful. Big lot, so nice big beautiful home on Brandon Place in Avon Lake. And that wraps up this week. If you like the content, snap the code. I think that's the right code. There it is. Snap that code. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Meta keeps threatening to take down my page. I don't know why. Probably because I put screen records of the Wrath of Con up there and stuff like that on occasion. Um, they haven't done it yet, but they may, and if they do, you can find everything on YouTube. Uh, you can also find me on Spotify on audio version. Uh, but as always, thanks for joining me. Take care of yourselves, take care of one another. I love you, people.