Much Ado About Nothing...

Well, turns out the County didn't spray last night. I called the mosquito control board to find if the scheduled changed. I was told that they didn't spray last night because the "landing count was too low". We are scheduled for dusk next Monday. Lesson learned, call during the day Monday to confirm that we will be sprayed before going through all that trouble. I also spoke to a recent aquaintance this morning who I've met through a local area food program; she has taken the Maryland Master Gardeners Courses through the Department of Agriculture, and she gave me the name and number of someone there that I can call to discuss this issue further. In particular, to find out more details about permethrin such as how long it stays aloft, etc. to make sure that covering the garden is actually going to help. It's hard to see how it wouldn't, but I suspect that both my aquaintance and the woman whose number she gave me know more about these things than I do at this point, so it seems that I have some more research to do.

14 minutes till bug spray time...

And this time we're ready. It took my husband and I about an hour and a half working together to turn the garden into a bubble...

Today's Work

Here's this morning's harvest. My first bush beans! Lots of cukes. In the back in the white bowl is my first bush baby zucchini that I got the other day.


I started work today on my pesticide protection program. You'll get the basic idea from the pictures below. It's just 1/2" PVC pipe, 2' rebar, and plastic sheeting. I'm still not done. I need more supplies. Doing this gives me some good ideas about how to do dimensions on my fall garden space. They won't be spraying in the fall, but I can probably extend my harvest season a little bit by covering the plants...

Today's haul - and some dire news...

Here’s today’s take from the garden.

The eggplant didn’t make it.

And it doesn’t look like the plant’s going to make it either; not because of the potato beetles but because the doggone zucchini is just completely taking it over. This happened last year too, with a different plant choking out the eggplant (I can’t remember offhand what).

I think it’s time to put my eggplant seedlings in big pots on the deck and hope for the best.

Here’s my first yellow squash on the deck! I had my first zucchini for dinner last night. It was beautiful and great.

Herbs are going well.

The potato plants are getting HUGE.

And now for the dire news…

This past Monday evening – without notice – our County began its mosquito control program, which consisted of driving a pickup truck through our neighborhood spraying permethrin from a tank in the pickup bed. This noxious cloud drifts out over everything, including the garden! I was both hysterical and heartbroken. They didn’t do this last year. My husband was a little quicker-thinking. While I was inside have a breakdown, he was outside pulling plastic over the garden. He didn’t have enough to cover more than half. And because our garden is behind a privacy fence on all sides and set back some few hundred feet from the source of the spray, and protected by trees on one side, its likely that the damage was minimal, but I don’t want anything sprayed on my food!

I scrubbed the heck out of everything that I harvested today, and threw away the beet greens – what a shame. The only comfort is that if they did get hit, that there is still probably substantially less residue on them then on commercially-produced agriculture, where the pesticides are sprayed deliberately right on the plants, so we’re still better off. I have since checked out neighboring counties here, as we’re thinking of moving in the next year or so, and it seems all the counties around here do this. It makes me very angry and frustrated and helpless that someone can come through spraying pesticides that will contaminate my garden.

I called the County Mosquito Control Program Tuesday morning and had our address placed on the “objection list”, which means that they supposedly won’t spray at my address, but as I live in a neighborhood with houses not too far from me it’s hard to see how much good that’s going to do. So between now and this coming Monday evening (they will be doing this weekly through September) we are going to have to figure out how to cover this 800 square foot space, and covering the garden will have to be our regular Monday evening chore.

I’ll keep you posted on what we come up with.

The good news....

My last post was about blossom end rot - this one is about everything that's going WELL....

Zucchini!

Here are the yellow wax beans I planted where some turnips were, coming up nicely. I mixed in more manure compost before planting and the beans are supposed to be good crops to alternate with the turnips...



Yellow squash, also planted in a spot where turnips used to be...I managed to eat every one of those turnips, by the way...

Tomatoes doing well...

Look at these cucumbers I discovered this morning! These really snuck up on me....

I have little beans on my bush bean plants!

Help! Blossom End Rot!

I seem to be getting blossom end rot on one of my tomato plants - not sure which one, I couldn't find the little sign. I ookied this up this morning. It seems that the four possible causes are:

1) I planted them a little too early, the soil was too cold and inhibited the root growth some, this is just occurring in the first fruits and will subside (possible, I planted them at the end of April I think)

2) Too little water (very unlikely)

3) Too little calcium (possible)

4) They're planted too close to other plants and aren't getting enough nutrients because of competition ( suppose this is possible, but I think that #3 is probably the most likely candidate).

I picked off about 8 bad ones today. Right now I'm thinking about getting a food with a higher phosperous amount...Cindy, what do you think?

Rainy Saturday...

So...no pictures this morning. But I did go out to check on things. The yellow wax beans I planted where the turnips and radishes used to be are coming up beautifully. I pulled up my first couple of touchstone gold beets, still small, and cooked them and the greens, along with a few red beets from last week and some cajun sausage for lunch...YUM!

Weighty and Unruly!

I had to stake one of the tomato cages the other day - these plants are just so huge! There are arms sprawling all over the place!

I also had to give some support to the mini red bell pepper plant, which is getting heavy with fruit...

Potato Beetle Update

I've been on potato beetle patrol since my last post on the subject. A few days ago I had a banner day - not really seeing the grown ones anymore but was seeing a LOT of the larvae of various sizes. Crushed everything I saw (yes, this is VERY gross). I found that folding over and pinching the leaf they're on works pretty well and keeps the goop to a minimum. I also found about 5 or six patches of orange eggs, on the underside of the potato plant leaves, and on my eggplant! So I got rid of all of them. The day after that I saw substantially less larvae....Sorry but I didn't have the camera on me during this exercise...

Potatoes are flowering!

Here they are - blooming! Does this mean that in a few weeks I'll be able to start harvesting potatoes?


There are little yellow blossoms all over the melon plants...

Cucumbers are also steadily flowering...

And the bush bean blossoms! How delicate and pretty!

This morning's action...

My first Zucchini! (if you don't count the little one I accidentally broke off a few days ago...)

That eggplant seems to be growing an inch or so a day...

My first bush beans!!!!!

Yesterday's Harvest

Roasted root veggies and and greens with rice and sausage for dinner last night!

Colorado Potato Beetles

Well, I have a positive ID on my potato-eating critters – Colorado Potato Beetle (with the brown and yellow stripes) and their larvae (the red and black ones). Apparently this is what is also eating my eggplant. What to do about it? Well, pesticides are out, so the fact that they apparently become resistant to a pesticide very quickly is immaterial to me. I read a paper from the University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture (you can fidd it at this link) that said:(http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/entfactpdf/ef312.pdf)

“Potato plants can withstand considerable defoliation without yield loss. Plants can lose up to 30% of their foliage without yield loss. Generally, insecticides do not need to be applied unless there is more than an average of one beetle or larva per plant. Additionally, some beneficial insects such as birds, predatory stink bugs, and parasitic flies will help to reduce Colorado potato beetle numbers somewhat.”

From that, I would say that at this point my problem with the potatoes is not too bad. I have never seen more than one or two on a plant at a time, and when I walk through all my plants I usually only find one or two plants (out of 11) that have any on them at all. Whenever I see them I pick them off and crush them. I do have a lot of birds visiting the garden. I have a birdbath – maybe I should put that in the middle of where the potato plants are to encourage even more birds to visit and eat them. I also need to get a little more vigilant a couple times a day about wandering through to take a look and plucking them off. I was out a little before 6 this morning, and I found two beetles on one plant.

If anyone knows of any other organic action I can take about this problem I would love to hear it!

Catch up photos

Here's the last of my three catch up posts. Note the weeds coming up through the straw. I think I must need more straw.

Sweet potatoes

I had no idea that the sweet potato was a vine...

Yellow Beets

I'll be starting to pull these up in a few weeks. I've already had some of the greens.

Potato in its cage.

Serrano Peppers


Orange Mandarin
This huge pepper was bowing the plant. I had to cage it, something I should have done before it got so big because now the cage is kind of cramping some of the plant the way I had to position it to support the pepper....

Anaheim Pepper

Spanish Onions

More Cucumbers I Grew From Seed!

Bush Beans Getting Big!

Red Beets!

Melon Patch

Believe it or not I have thinned these a number of times...

Herbs in front, Carrot in back, Yellow Squash to the sides

Tomato Status

Here's some pictures of how the tomatoes are doing - huge and bushy. The close up is the yellow taxi.

You'll see I had to add a new stake to the gigantic beauty below. This is the one that the staked limb seemed to be half broken off (I think from weight) but I forgot to take a picture of the break while I was out there. It's been 2 days since I noticed it and the branch still looks healthy so maybe it'll be okay.

Here's one of my cucumbers (from seed!!!!!!) that I staked, and tomatoes behind.

Here's another new tomato - not sure which kind, as I didn't check the label while I was out there...