Herbs and Strawberries: have not tolerated the move to a garden box very well. I am going to have to start over with rosemary and the cilantro is struggling. My new basil plants look pretty good though. And my super productive parsley has finally died, so I have to start over there too. I still have a nice oregano plant in the front yard. It is huge but has never bloomed...any insight?
Peas: More resiliant than I thought. They collapsed due to the cucumber vines pulling them down and from becoming too top heavy. Nevertheless, they continue to produce pods and are now showing signs of trying to grow up again. I have started saving a couple each day in hopes I can just freeze them and use them eventually. I have a snack sized baggie I'm saving them in and it is half full. Also, I haven't noticed any bugs on them.
Cucumbers: After showing the strongest start and giving me dreams of making pickles, we had a huge infestation of pickleworms (the larval stage of a certain moth). Last year that would have been fascinating. This year it is very disappointing! I cut back a lot, which makes the garden look kind of withered and we are still getting cucumbers, but not as much and most of them have worms. But the ones overlooked by the worms have been very good.
Cantelope: Unfortunately, cantelope is also attractive to pickleworms. We had about 3 or 4 strong plants with several small melons starting. One day last week, Mako pulled all but one out of the ground. The last one has orange sized melon on it, but is has a worm hole.
Carrots:
Still small, but so far, so good. The kids ate this one and said it was very good. (They like carrots a lot anyway.)The whole bug problem was making me feel very defeated and then...the cavalry arrived:
Behold: BABY LADYBUGS!
Ah, it is a bug eat bug world out there :)p.s. that bottom picture is equivalent to the chrysalis stage of a butterfly. I don't really think it's called a chryaslis for a lady bug though. I am pretty sure these are a red kind without spots.
I get so excited when I see ladybugs on my milkweed plants! Unfortunately there are never enough.
ReplyDeleteI hated to do it, but we finally had to spray our tomato plants last year for tomato hornworms. We used Sevin, which is ok to use on veggies that will be eaten, assuming you wait a certain amount of days after spraying to harvest them. It worked very well and didn't leak over onto our milkweed plants at all.
Love the "baby" carrot. :)
Gardening is always an experiment and just when you think you've got it down something goes haywire like the weather or bugs or something. Keep it up!
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