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Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Garden update with a gratuitous chick picture
OK, we have had our first garden casualties this year:
Spinach, being devoured by striped cucumber beetles. EVIL EVIL BEETLES. I offered the kids a bounty of a dime a beetle and they found and squished over a hundred of the demonic little beasts. Anyone know if we can wash this and eat it, or if we should just count it a loss?
Something also ate a bell pepper plant down to its stem. The others have a little damage here and there (grasshoppers? More beetles? Tomato worms?), but this was pretty extreme. Wonder if it will miraculously come back.
But all is not lost; here's a pea blossom.
And most of the pepper plants look more like this. (Fortunately.)
itty bitty baby zucchino rampicante plant. Grow grow grow!
I still need to plant the rest of our squash and the melons. This is SUPER LATE to be planting. I felt all motivated to go out and do that a few minutes ago. Lemme check -- OK, nope. All gone. Darn. (I'll do it later anyway.)
Tomato plants.
Tomatoes and basil. Early on something was eating the basil but the new leaves seem to be OK. Probably because the beetles all headed for greener pastures in the spinach bed next door.
Claire's 4-H bed. :) She's got potatoes (which we need to bury; another project for today or tomorrow), onions, a tomato plant, a pumpkin vine, a Jerusalem artichoke, and probably something else that I'm forgetting.
And as promised, cute young chicks:
HA HA I'M SO FUNNY. (They look like teenagers.)
Comments
have you ever tried diamataceous earth for the bugs? Works great! Make sure you get FOOD grade DE. Perhaps you already use it for your chickens?
Posted by: @msbeeee on twitter at May 26, 2009 11:02 AM
Msbeeee -- great idea! We have it for our super-long-term food storage, actually.
Posted by: Rachel at May 26, 2009 11:54 AM
Too bad about the spinach! It *seems* like it should be ok to eat, but I really don't know, either.
Those chicks truly do look like teenagers. (g) They also look like a bigger group, now that they're growing. Have you started planning what you'll do with all those eggs? Scrambled, for breakfast? If there are very many extra, I suppose you could pickle them, give them to family or friends, or even sell them at a roadside "honor system" stand.
Posted by: Michael at May 26, 2009 02:23 PM
Michael -- I think I'll be able to get rid of the excess at church etc - and if I get a WHOLE lot of excess, there's the weekly farmer's market. But I'm not planning on having that many. :)
Posted by: Rachel at May 26, 2009 03:18 PM
As always, you are an inspiration. I'm making a totally ambivalent gardening attempt - a friend gave me some spare plants and I stuck them in the ground and am watering them. I'll let you know how it goes.
Posted by: Kat with a K at May 28, 2009 03:59 AM
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