I've been a little bit M.I.A. the past 2 weeks in the garden, and was able to get back into the swing of things with a little surprise. And not necessarily a good one, either. I watered my plants a couple days ago and while walking around to just check on things to see how they were doing and noticed a rather large hole in the middle of the green beans. I peaked inside to find something with a large body crawling in, and after running out shrieking like a little school girl in a panic I grabbed my computer to figure out what on earth it could have been.
Much to my dismay, it appeared to be a nesting wasp that feeds on cicadas and buries a hole in the ground. While there is a lot of talk about an impending cicada overload, there's not a chance I'm allowing a wasp in my garden. When I was 9 years old I stepped on a yellow jacket nest in the middle of the summer and needless to say bees (or the like) are not my favorite of God's creatures. Not even close.
A day or two later I grabbed my dad, also not a fan of bees, and he grabbed himself a little smoke contraption and we planned to take care of business when I peaked in and found it was definitely not a wasp or anything with wings at all... It was the mother-load of millipede-like creatures cramped into a small hole in the middle of my bean bed. We packed up our smoke set and a little research said that millipedes were great for the garden; the bugs were spared to live another day.
That is, until today.
I went back in to check on things and to give the garden another water and found that not only was the hole still full of worms, but now the worms were taking over the beds. And, as if that wasn't enough, the last straw was finding some bite marks and a lost brand-new bean sprout. I checked on the other plants and noticed bite marks on several of the pepper plants, too, which happened to be very near to the ground.
In anger, I marched back into the house, pulled out my computer and read on another site that said they can be destructive to seedlings, especially if the garden is over-crowded. I also read that baking soda is a way to kill most any bug, including ants, which was great because the cornmeal I dusted over by the onion plants made them move to another box across the garden. After a cup of soda dusted across the problem areas and a mix of cornmeal and soda sprinkled on the ants' nest, I took another good look around to see what else needed tending to.
I did a little weeding today, pulled out most of the sprouts that had popped up almost overnight and planted a bunch of seedlings my mom bought over the weekend. Our local grocer had a super cheap sale on plants, and while I was out she went on a spree and bought cauliflower, red cabbage, 12 seedlings of eggplant, brussels sprouts and celery plants... pretty much all of which happen to be cold-season crops, aside from the eggplant. It ought to be interesting to see how they fare in the heat of the tent.
Ok, so here's a quick recap of the past two weeks:
- Found a thieves hideout of millipedes and dumped a cup of baking soda in it
- Found some of my pepper plants and bean plants were chewed
- Looking like 1-2 of the heirloom tomato plants didn't make it through the transplant (mostly due to me not allowing it to sprout large enough before planting
- Planted a ton of cold-season veggies in a hot tent
- The green grape plant is looking pretty good, and I'm pleased to think I'm getting grapes this year. Win!
- The red grape plant kind of exploded with new foliage. Last year nothing really happened. it was just pretty pathetic all season long and sprouted a half of leaf. Today I walked in and it has 4 nice canes growing, so while I can expect no grapes from it this year, I know it's still alive.
- Broccoli has a floret! Not sure how that works or how to pick it, but there's one there!
- Bean plants are growing so well. Pretty excited about this since they bombed last year.
- Cucumbers finally sprouted. Actually, the organic ones I bought online sprouted, the big-box chain home improvement store ones did not. Not-a-one of them.
- Onions are getting pretty tall, at least a foot on them so far. They're actually starting to stink up the tent, so I guess it's a good sign that they're fragrant.
- Carrots are growing! I had a hard time growing them last year. Lots of greens and no carrot, so hopefully we have some roots growing in there this time.
- Tomatoes have grown a lot. Eggplants, not so much. they haven't gotten worse, they just haven't done much.
- Tomatillos I've been having a heck of a time with. One of the cups was eaten by something, and the other two cups sprouted like 5 sprouts each. I managed to plant 3 total holes, so we shall see how this works with them.
- Jalepenos are showing progress, they've about doubled since their planting.
- Zinnias have sprouted, so that's exciting. I hope that's a zinnia sprout.
- Really have to plant my cantaloup plants and my squash, however I found that our local stores do not carry chicken wire anymore, and I am currently trying to find another solution to how I'm going to trellis them without an actual trellis. Also something that doesn't cost a million dollars.
That's all folks. More next time.
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