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.

Under Attack

It's me against the bugs and I'm seriously outnumbered. Every time I look at the broccoli plants I find more little green caterpillars. I keep squishing them but then the next day more of the leaves will be gone and I'll find more caterpillars.


I never expected much out of the broccoli plants mid-summer, so the real tragedy is the tomato plants. I haven't been checking in on them as frequently as I should have been and when I got out yesterday I found them completely covered in spider mites. There were adult spider mites, baby spider mites, and lots of webbing and little white specks. I decided the best course of action was going to be to cut off all the leaves that looked diseased or had lots of bugs on them. That turned out to be A Lot of branches. The plants look pretty stripped now.

My first eggplant!

Look what I spotted this morning! Lots more blooms too although the rain has been beating the plants.

Fresh Veggies for Supper

Picked tomatoes, onion, and a pepper for fajitas tonight. Yum!

I see red

First tomato turning red

Peppers

Peppers are getting bigger!

Eggplant buds

Flower buds are developing on the eggplant plants

Thunderstorm Damage

Strong winds flattened the plants today. Nothing broken, just bent.

Keep up the good work!

The tomatoes are still growing. There are a few on one of the other plants as well. Still nothing on the rest. The plants themselves have definitely gotten bigger over the past week or so though.

Two of my three pepper plants, despite being pretty small, are growing multiple peppers.

There are also buds on the zucchini plants- male and female! I hope they open at the same time this year.

Video Tour

Come on Tomatoes!

Lots of flowers on both types of tomato plants, but so far still only tomatoes growing on the one plant. Here are the two types and the information on each from the Park Seed web page.


The photo to the right is the Tomato Mega Bite Hybrid. Park Seed advertises that each plant will produce up to 60 4 to 6 oz. fruit (3-4 inches in diameter). The branches are described as being short and lateral with the fruit close to the stem (thus not requiring staking and tying). That seems accurate although I do still wonder if the plants are somewhat stunted from the less than ideal soil. I have four of these plants. You can see the two large ones in the photo and one of the younger ones in between.


The photo to the left is the Tomato Container Choice Hybrid. It is advertised as producing 8 oz tomatoes. So far nothing on mine. I have three plants. I tied two of them to sticks after they started to lean in last weekend's thunderstorms. They've had a smattering of flowers for a week or so, but no sign of a tomato yet.

The eggplant plants are growing peppers!!

Or perhaps slightly more likely, I mixed up the two plants. :) So reverse eggplant and pepper in my previous posts.


I was just outside watering when I spotted the open flowers on the "eggplant" plants. When I leaned in closer to look I spotted little green peppers! Oops. But still- Cool! Check out the little pepper right in the middle of the picture above. The real eggplant plant is pictured below.

Garden Update

So far the only produce actually growing is some tomatoes on one plant, but flowers are starting to appear and bloom, so more harvests should be on the way soon (I hope!). The top picture is of the tomato plant that has at least a half dozen little tomatoes forming. The photo at the very end of this blog post is another kind of tomato plant. It's a lot less compact. Both are supposed to be container plants. (I bought the seeds before we decided to put in the raised bed in the front yard.)


I planted some more of the zucchini seeds I planted in containers last summer. I planted three of one kind and then two of the black beauty kind. They're all growing fast. The picture to the left is of two of them.


Things are not going well with the peas. I don't see the little green aphids but there are definitely little bugs on there and the plants are dying. Perhaps I'm not meant to grow peas. I might pull them up this weekend and do some yellow squash instead if I can still find seeds.


The pepper and eggplant plants aren't all that big but they seem to be doing ok. The eggplant have what look to be buds forming. Right now an egg plant would crush the whole plant, so hopefully it has a growth spurt soon. We should have fertilized more when we planted. The dirt we got from the dump was supposed to be a mixture of dirt, compost, and fine mulch. It just doesn't have the nutrients in it. The picture to the left is of one of the eggplants.


Some of the beans are getting flowers and the plants are getting bigger, so I should at least have a handful for a meal soon. I've got some more seeds soaking now and am going to plant them tomorrow. Some of the plants look a bit stunted, which is going to leave the beans dragging on the ground. I just got some Miracle Gro fertilizer granules for vegetables to mix into the water and have applied that a couple times. I hope that helps create some more robust plants.


The little broccoli plants are still growing, apparently unaware this is the wrong season for them. I don't know if they'll actually get to the point of broccoli heads, but I don't have the heart to pull them up. No picture of those since I'm running out of space in this blog post, but I've got three in the ground.

Carrot Harvest

Making beef stew today. Just pulled the carrots. Dug up four onions Sunday.

First Tomato

As small as the plant is I don't know how it will support a tomato but it's growing one.

Bad News for the Peas

We were noticing the larger pea plants are dying. Upon closer inspection, many of the plants seem to be infested with aphids. The little green bugs blend in so easily I hadn't noticed them before. They look like the little green bugs that killed my mint. I just tried spraying on a mix of dish soap, canola oil, and water, so we'll see if that kills them. It's a disappointing start to my garden.

First Pea Pods!

My first two pea plants have pods on them! Very cool. Things are looking good overall in the garden. The blueberry bush leaves are looking more green than red again. (I don't know whether to attribute that to the coffee grounds or just the plants adapting to the repotting). The tomato seedlings especially are getting more leaves and looking healthier than when I first transplanted them. Exciting all around.

Mint

The chocolate mint was officially lost to the spider mites. I saved a piece of the regular mint plant and repotted it in hopes that it will come back. The battle continues on with the mint julep. I'm actually not sure spider mites are the entire problem. I've spotted a couple bugs that appear to have wings although I haven't seen them fly. Then there are tons of these tiny little green bugs that cling to the stem and leaves. Every couple days I pick more of them off with the scotch tape, but I'm not sure this is a winning battle.

First Pea Flower

I spotted the first flower on one of the pea plants I started inside. The peas I direct sowed into the ground have also popped up.

Not much to report on the other plants. None of the seedlings have died, but they don't look quite as healthy as when they were inside. They're a bit yellow. As for what I've got: two types of tomatoes, eggplant, bell pepper, and broccoli.

I also direct sowed some bush beans and I spotted one of those breaking ground, so those and the peas are giving me hope.

I had a little extra space on the ends too so I sprinkled out the rest of my carrot seeds and stuck in four onions seeds. The onions, some of the carrots, and garlic that overwintered in containers have gotten knocked around a little bit (due to a couple greenhouse collapses) but seem to be doing fine.

Red Blueberry Bush Leaves

I'm concerned about the blueberry bushes I got a couple weeks ago. They looked just fine at the store, but now that I've repotted them and put them outside, most of the leaves have turned red. I don't know what could be causing it. I've tried adding some coffee grounds to the soil to improve the pH, but I haven't seen a change.

Done!

We finished the raised garden bed today! I had previously bought Easy Gardener 7-by-100 foot deer netting (cost: less than $20). We do have deer wandering the neighborhood and I'm not about to lose my vegetables to them (and hopefully also not the squirrels, rabbits, or birds). I opted just to wrap the netting around the bed rather than cover the top because I want the bees to still be able to get in. The netting feels kinda flimsy, but I'm really happy with how easy it was to install and the fact that it is pretty much invisible. Eric attached it to the posts with little horseshoe tacks, leaving one side open. On that side, there are nails so I can hook the netting over them to keep the bed enclosed and easily unhook it when I want to get in.

As you can see in the photo, I laid 1x1 foot stepping stones down the center of the bed so I'd have somewhere to walk without stepping on the plants on either side. (The stepping stones were left over from an unfinished project from last summer that is moving back up to the top of my to-do list now that this garden bed is finished).

I hope this wasn't premature, but I went ahead and planted some of the seeds I started. The peas were growing much too fast to have no trellis so they were first in the ground. The "trellis" is just more of the cedar 1x2s I bought to wrap the deer netting around, cut down into stakes and strung with more deer netting. In front of the peas are two lettuce plants that made it through the winter in my greenhouse.

Eric snaked the sprinkler under the netting to water everything. Works great! I think we're both very happy with the result. And glad it's done! Now hopefully everything will grow!

Dirty Work

Picked up two more truck loads of dirt for the raised bed today. We shovelled most in and spread some of the remainder in some of the low places in the yard. It looks good. We did end up digging out out some of the dirt we put in the other week so we could attach 2x4s in a couple spots where the wood was bowing in or out. We should have done that before we put the dirt in, but I think we were in denial and thought perhaps it would magically fix itself. If you're keeping track, the wood and screws cost $101, the stain about $10, and the dirt $27 per truck load.

Attack of the Spider Mites

All three of my mint plants are infested with spider mites. Surprisingly, they don't seem to have spread to the other plants, but they LOVE the mint plants. Armed with some scotch tape, I tried a one-on-one attack this evening. They stick to the tape like a charm, but even with reasonably small plants it turned pretty time-consuming. I'm certain I didn't manage to spot them all either. The little green ones blend right into the leaves and hide in the crooks of the stem. I really don't want to use a commercial bug spray, so I'm remaining optimistic that I can tamp down the infestation by hand, at least on the mint julep. The other mint plant I think might be too far gone and the chocolate mint is such a mess they're hard to spot.

What a project...

After hauling the pre-built sides individually out to the build site, we decided there was no way we'd be able to pick up the fully constructed box. So instead we set sides in the ground one at a time. It's not perfect, but turned out better than my lowered expectations.

This photo is Eric getting ready to attach the sides together. You can see where some of the wood has bowed already and isn't laying flush. We need to get that fixed still.

After this photo was taken we hauled in two pickup truck loads of dirt and shoveled it in. We're going to need a third for sure, but we ran out of time before the dump closed.

Eric just peered over my shoulder as I'm writing this and said "I'd better be getting a glowing review." He absolutely should. This was a lot of work. A lot of digging and shoveling and picking up the sides and putting them back down as we tried to dig a straight trench, a deep enough hole for the posts, and get the whole thing level on our very not level lawn. After working until 4:30 p.m. without a lunch break we devoured some sandwiches and ice cream at Sonic. I don't think we've undertaken a home-related project yet that hasn't taken at minimum twice as long as we expected. I hate to even put a multiple on this one. It's big. As I say every time though, we could probably do the second one a lot faster.

Drilling and Staining

Today we got the two 8-foot end pieces together. Each consists of two 8x10 boards screwed onto a post. In the picture they are upside-down serving as a platform for the remaining boards, which I put a second layer of stain on tonight. We moved into the garage for warmth and a flat floor. It had the bonus of also being out of the leaves and such that kept blowing and sticking to the stained boards. On the downside, I inhaled a lot of stain fumes.

Next: Screwing together the 16-foot sides and attaching it all to form a box.

More Digging

We got the rest of the 8x16 plot dug out today. We lugged all the grass we dug up in chunks over to another part of the yard that we've had trouble getting grass to grow in. I also got one coat of stain on the 12 boards. And I learned that although they're sold as 8-foot-long boards, that is actually a rough numbers. The ranged from 8/16 to 12/16 too long. Rather than saw them all, I figured out an arrangement that will made the sides equal, although the boards won't align precisely in the middle. Tomorrow if the weather holds up, I'm hoping to get the second coat of stain on. Then we need to cut the corner posts, screw the boards on to make the box, and get it set in the ground. Getting it level I think will be a challenge, but it can't be as physically demanding as all the digging. Then hopefully we can pick up a couple truckloads of the dirt/compost/fine mulch mixture that the landfill sells. We've never bought it before so I'm just hoping it will be good for gardening. We'd go broke buying bags of soil from the home improvement store.

I'm going to have to change the name of the blog

Eric and I commenced installing a raised garden bed today. It is, of course in the front corner of the lot (the only place that gets full sun). Here's a zoomed out photo showing the composter on the left, the greenhouse on the right, and Eric toiling away in the middle (the post is a rain gauge). We opted for untreated wood knowing it won't last forever, but I just wasn't convinced after reading about treated wood that I wanted to risk anything leeching into my vegetables (even with the change from CCA to ACQ, which is what Lowes carries). We bought 8-foot long 2x10 boards. We figure we're going to have to sink them into the ground a bit so we bought enough boards to do a double level. More work tomorrow!

The Greenhouse

Eric bought me a greenhouse for Christmas. I was slack on blogging over the winter, so I hadn't posted a picture yet. Here it is. It warms up pretty good in there during the day. It doesn't maintain an above-freezing temperature when it drops below 32 degrees at night though. I suspect it helps some, but the plants still freeze. As for performance in warmer weather, there is unfortunately no ventilation other than opening the door, so it gets pretty humid in there.

Broccoli for Supper

It looked like the broccoli flowers might be getting ready to open so I picked a head today although it wasn't as big as I would have hoped for.

Ploppy Showing How Big the Broccoli Is

The broccoli head isn't quite as tight as I'm used to seeing in the store. Perhaps the heads get more spread out before they should be picked?

Broccoli is Looking Good

The coloration on some of the leaves isn't looking great, but the broccoli heads are growing.





Here's one of the broccoli heads just peeking out from the leaves.











The garlic has been sending up new leaves.

More Broccoli!

Despite the freezing temps even in the greenhouse overnight, the broccoli plants all have little heads growing! I took these photos first thing in the morning. You can see the frost on the leaves. Brrr. Even the one plant that is flopped over growing pretty much sideways has a head on it. It's not pretty, but apparently functional. I've got one tiny broccoli plant too with maybe seven leaves on it that I thought the winter weather would have done in by now, but it's persevering. I can't wait until I can go out and pick a fresh head of broccoli for supper!

The garlic is also growing again now that its in the greenhouse. It seems like the highs and lows ought to be a little confusing to the plants, but I guess they're managing. With the sun beating down during the day it'll get to around 80. Then at night it drops below freezing. I've only lost one garlic plant (one of the two I planted from cloves I bought at Trader Joe's). At least the one leaf that was above ground is totally dead. Here's a picture of one of the garlic pots that is doing well.

As for the remaining plants, some of the onions that have leaves have pretty much disappeared. Some of the others still have green leaves, but only one or two. It's not an impressive showing. The lettuce pretty much bit the dust. The little seedlings I think were just too small to survive the freezing temps.

Stew Carrots

I decided to pull a bunch of the carrots today to add to a beef stew I was making. Most of them were not full size, but I wanted them for the stew and I wasn't sure how the heat and then cold were treating them outside. I left some in the pots so I'll see how they do with a little more time on them.