Monday, April 25, 2011

The garden is looking awesome. Yeah – I said it. The beetles did a number on the bean leaves, but the plants are still alive and producing.  Since I can’t use insecticide I hand-pick and squish other critters that I find, but so far nothing else has done serious damage. All of my tomato plants have little starter maters, the potatoes are flowering and the corn is even coming up.  That’s right – corn. A stretch of my gardening wings, I know, but I have the space and after reading the back of the seed packet, corn is planted seed to ground. It doesn’t transplant well. So I dropped in a couple rows and we’ll see what happens. According to my mid-western coworker I’m aiming for knee-high by the Fourth of July.
The toughest part of gardening right now is practicing patience. I can see everything growing and it all looks incredible, but it’s just too soon. Last week I was at the garden and eager to enjoy the vegetables of my labor, I started pulling off beans to eat with dinner. The grand harvest resulted in 4 beans apiece for Mike and me. Not exactly bringing home the veggie-bacon...

Friday, April 8, 2011

I've got worms...and beetles

What a bummer. Despite all my efforts to maintain weeds and check for bugs, some little varmits got a hold of my beans (pics below). About half the plants have holes in the leaves and three plants have just fallen over. This of course led to a frantic Google search of all things bug.  Turns out 95% of garden bugs are good bugs – they break down organic matter, pollinate, and eat other bugs, but the other 5% suck. Actually, half of them suck and the other half chew.
The best website I uncovered during my search was www.gardeners.com 
I found a picture of some bean leaf beetle damage and it looked exactly like my little chewn up leaves. The culprit for the fallen over plants is most likely cutworm. A little gem who likes to chew the stems of young plants right at ground level and then, as far as I can tell, just lets the plant die. I find these little jerks to be very counterproductive. I plan to get some natural insecticide for the entire garden. There are lots of recipes online for how to make your own, but rather than concoct something gross enough to repel slugs in my own kitchen, I think I’ll just purchase it.
Victory note – Ate a salad tonight with some home grown lettuce. Absolutely delicious!
Public Enemy #1