This week’s harvest. So this past week, the weather suddenly decides that we’ve had enough of the soggy 50s and immediately jumps to the humid 80s! Whoa! Now things are really starting to happen in the garden. We are rapidly coming to the end of the radishes; we’ve harvested virtually all of the first crop and have started harvesting the second crop, this time right on schedule. The early lettuces are cranking out more than we can possibly consume so Phyllis has been dragging baskets full into work to give away. We both agree that intensive direct seeding of the lettuces under row covers worked really well and we will continue with this practice in the future. With the sudden change in temperature it seems all of my broccoli raab has bolted at the same time, therefore I have a plastic shopping bag full of it in my refrigerator. Looks like the peas will be ready for harvest next week.
Cucumber beetles and stink bugs. Every inspection of my cantaloupes over the last few days has revealed an abundance of these two pests. The striped cucumber beetles are hosts for the bacterium that causes bacterial wilt. They can also spread mosaic virus. These guys are clearly mating so I’m going to have to keep a leery eye out for the larvae and hit them with everything I’ve got. My cantaloupes may already be goners but I’m not going down without a fight.
A little nipper. So three days after planting my peppers I came out one morning to find that one of my Krimzon Lee had been bitten of at ground level. CUTWOOORRRRM!!! Damn, I had forgotten to treat the two pepper beds with BTk-laced cornmeal. In past years cutworms have taken down so many of my purchased seedlings that I had sworn an oath to eradicate them by whatever means necessary. Last season we placed plastic collars around all of our seedlings which proved fairly effective (not totally, though) but was also tedious to do for ALL the seedlings. So this year I am sprinkling cornmeal laced with BTk around each bed and it has worked like a charm. Naturally, the little nipper had chosen the one new variety of pepper I was looking forward to growing this year and one that had a very poor germination rate. Luckily I had ONE seedling in reserve in the greenhouse for replacement…and he got that one too!!! I must have planted it right on top of him.
Other happenings around the garden. Phyllis planted her drying beans. The cucumbers were planted and a temporary trellis installed. Sunflowers were planted. Two more self-watering containers with chard and basil were made for the roof-top garden at work. Eggplants were finally transplanted. Bunching onions, shallots and leeks were direct seeded into one of the new beds in the south garden. The irrigation system in south garden was reconfigured for the new beds.
Here are a few more photos from the last week of May, 2011 at mediaOrganic –
CUTWOOORRRRM!!! >> Sigh << undone by a garden critter. Fair to say all living things have to consume nourishment. To human caring or otherwise.
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Hmmm…. I’m starting to think that cucumber beetles might be what did me in last year. All of the cukes turned a funny brown color. They were still OK-ish inside, but something was clearly wrong. Any thoughts? And how do you control the little hummers? Neem oil maybe?
BTW – I’m so impressed with how far along your plants are. We’ve had really weird weather out here. First it was in the 90′s back in April – which caused the spinach to bolt. Then it went the other way and we had cold rainy days in the 40′s and 50′s with nights down around freezing. Now we’re back to the 90′s. The poor plants… they must be very confused. It’s April… no wait, it’s August, no April, no August!
Hey Becks,
The weather has been crazy here too. Though we didn’t have the early heat wave we sat in the 50′s for most of what we normally call spring and then it jumped to the 80s and 90′s.
I’ve not yet tried neem oil but this might be the year. My normal remedies seem to be less than effective against the cucumber beetles and stink bugs. The leaves on the poor cantaloupes are looking all deformed. I’ll throw up a photo in my next weekly update.