Don't Mess With the Eggplant

As I was cutting off a few eggplant today to take over to the neighbors, I found some squash bug eggs underneath one of the leaves. I don't know if the squash bug got lost or what. So far the eggplants are the only thing that haven't been affected by bugs at all (I've only lost one pepper to a caterpillar).

The tomato plants are looking pretty bad again. I'm not sure if its wilt or more spider mites. The leaves are turning yellow and curling up. I don't think I'm getting any new tomatoes, but the green ones are ripening.

A New Enemy

When I got home yesterday after four days away from the garden I (not surprisingly) found the squash bugs had taken advantage of the lull in attacks and had multiplied. There were adult bugs, baby bugs, eggs. Ugh. I have found that spraying water on the bottoms of the plants drives the bugs up the leaves where they are easier to grab and squish. Yes, I mean between the thumb and pointer finger, squish. (I've read they stink when you squish them, but I haven't noticed. I also haven't exactly been sniffing.)

At least at this point the squash bugs feel like a known enemy. Now though, I have an unknown enemy to deal with. When I was looking for the squash bugs I started noticing a lot of tiny yellow bugs. At first I thought they were little yellow eggs, but some of them definitely moved. I don't know what they are.

To add insult to injury, all of the little growing zucchini have rotted too.

Worth it?

The zucchini plants decided to show their appreciation for my dedicated squash bug squishing this morning (and not hold it against me that I’ve regularly been tearing off parts of their leaves where the bugs have laid eggs). Out of my four remaining zucchini plants, two of each variety, I had two open male flowers this morning and a few female flowers. I hand-pollinated with a small paintbrush, so maybe I’ll get some fruit (well, vegetables) for my efforts. I’m hopeful, although the bug problem continues. I stepped on an adult bug yesterday and when I moved my foot it actually started to walk away! Even though it’s late in the season, I planted a few more zucchini seeds a week or so ago and two of them have sprouted (conveniently one of each variety). I know I’m just adding to the bug battlefield, but I hope the chance of an increased harvest will pay off.

As for the bush beans, the plants all died, leaving nothing but leafless sticks poking up from the ground, with unhappy-looking beans in various stages of growth still hanging on. Since I don’t have anything to lose but seeds from replanting, I think I’ll give that a try next week with whatever seeds I have left.

Can't Win

There are no winners in the battle of the squash bugs. They have the numbers. I have the size. There are simply too many to annihilate. I’ve certainly put a dent in them through my regular checking under the leaves and removing eggs and newly hatched babies. The fact that there are babies at all show I’m not finding all the eggs though and if I fail to locate a bunch of unmoving eggs, my odds of locating all of the moving bugs once they’ve hatched are not good. The plants aren’t exactly easy to peer under and that would be without my ever increasing discomfort in bending. So life goes on with my “Squish ‘Em as You Find ‘Em” strategy seemingly sufficient to keep the plants alive, but not enough to ever actually end the war. It’s a fight of optimism though. While knowing it’s unlikely, I cling to the hope that maybe I can eradicate them. More importantly, I retain the belief that the plants are worth fighting for at all. For all my efforts I’ve harvested exactly one zucchini. I pulled it off a week ago and I haven’t even eaten it yet.

All this is in contrast to my so far trouble-free eggplant plants. I cut off two eggplants last night, one a bit larger that was turning more of a lavender rather than the deep purple of the smaller one. The seeds were larger in the bigger one, but I didn’t notice a difference in taste. Of course both were fried and covered in marinara sauce and cheese in an eggplant casserole, so the other flavors pretty well overwhelmed the eggplant. Good texture though. I was pleased.

I also managed to get a couple servings of green beans off the plants on Friday before they really took a turn for the worse over the weekend. I’m not really sure what got to them and I haven’t done any research to try to figure it out yet. The leaves all got sort of spotty and turned yellow and many have dropped off. It seemed to move progressively down the line of plants. They grow fast enough I could pull out what’s there and stick in some new ones, but I really ought to try to figure out what the problem is first.

Always Something

Squished two more squash bugs engaged in amorous activities on one of the zucchini plants this morning. This afternoon I noticed two tomatoes with holes in them. One had what looked like some eggs around the hole. I didn't cut them open to see what was inside. I'm not seeing any new foliage growth on the tomato plants since I cut them down so significantly in my attempt to combat the spider mites. There are a lot of green tomatoes hanging on them still, so hopefully they ripen.

Squash Bugs and Caterpillars

I am seriously outnumbered by the bugs out there. This morning I squished two adult squash bugs that appeared to be in the process of procreating. Then this afternoon I headed out to scrape any squash bug eggs off the underside of the zucchini plant leaves. Yikes! Not only were there lots of eggs, which were hard to scrape with the knife and keep from rolling off onto the ground, but I also discovered lots of little gray baby squash bugs crawling around. Ick. I suspect this wasn't the best course of action, but I just cut off the leaves that were covered in the bugs. As for the eggs, I can't say for sure I got all of them, but I think I got most of them.

Somewhat more humorously, this morning I spotted a small green bell pepper with a hole in it. I cut it off the plant and when I peered inside the hole there was a black and yellow caterpillar peering back out at me. It was sorta cute. It was like he decided why bother building a cocoon when he could just move into a nice green pepper. I am somewhat less amused, however, that the caterpillars aren't going to stop at eating the plant leaves and are going to go after the peppers too.

Good and Bad

Checked out my garden this morning after being gone for the past several days. Caterpillars had completely eaten one broccoli plant, leaving nothing but a stalk. One of my zucchini plants that hadn’t been looking good keeled over for one last time as well. I pulled two adult squash bugs off of another of the zucchini plants. The tomato plants still have some spider mites on them, but certainly fewer. I jet sprayed the remaining foliage again this morning to try to knock off some of the remaining bugs.

On the positive side, the eggplant plants and their growing eggplants look good, as do the peppers. One of the green peppers is starting to turn red. I did discover the one zucchini I had growing had gotten quite big over the past couple days, so I cut that off this morning. I think I’ll cut off a couple green peppers and add both veggies to a lasagna later this week. Too bad I don’t have enough tomatoes to do a homemade sauce.