Aphids!

I've never really had any issues with Aphids before..or not that I ever noticed. It could be just because we've had such a warm and dry winter this year that they are out in full force. My turnips never were doing really fabulously, I planted them much too close together but I noticed that the leaves appeared to be going downhill quite rapidly. Upon closer inspection I found a massive infestation of aphids. Look at them!!



No, look away!!! The horror!! Apparently aphids are weak, vulnerable, stupid, and easy to control, but that's only if you catch them before they become a problem.



That's not dirt, that's bugs, hundreds and hundreds of aphids. Their only strength for them, is numbers. They reproduce with live young at an alarming rate. They suck the very life out of plants and excrete a sweet sticky substance called honeydew and ants will protect aphids so they can harvest honeydew. Google that, it's fascinating. Because they are soft bodied, they squish easily, they poison easily with neem oil or diluted soap water. They're slow so you can spray them with a targeted jet of water and apparently they're too stupid to find their way back to the plant. I dunno about that, I mean how did they get there in the first place, chance? They also have lots of natural predators, lady bugs and assassin bugs. I even found one trying to work on the population on the turnips. I'd need a whole swarm of assassins to make a dent in this infestation.



He looks very much like a nymph stink bug, but you can be sure it's an assassin because he has a long pointy proboscis that he keeps tucked parallel to his body on the underside. Before I snapped this shot, he was actually eating an aphid. Wish I had gotten a picture of that.

As counter intuitive as it seems, healthy plants have less pest problems. Just like your healthy immune system fights infections or prevents infections, a healthy plant can fight off disease and pests too. These turnips were always pretty weak, coupled with the weather, I'm really not surprised.

So I just decided to harvest, I tossed all the greens in the compost and kept the roots to eat. I also checked all my other plants and found the beginnings of infestation on one collard plant and one cabbage plant so I harvested all the good vegetable and pulled and tossed those plants in the compost also.



You win some and you lose some, but now I'm sure what to look for and how to prevent and control major aphid infestation. Hopefully future experiences with them will be more successful.

What's Cookin' This Fall

I decided not to go too overboard this fall and plant things I know we usually eat. Not trying anything fancy but I am trying my repeat failures again: Beets and Peas.

In the spring I planted ONE sweet potato that had started sprouting in my pantry. It was slow to do anything. I harvested all my russets and just let the plant grow. Now it's flowering and basically taking over my garden one box at a time.

It's overflowed the one 8'x4' box and is creeping into the adjacent one

Hopefully the peas can catch up before they're overrun from the sweet potatoes. I try peas again, these are mammoth melting sugar snap peas-edible pod. i haven't had luck with either variety. They look OK so far, not terribly vigorous but I think they're enjoying this cooler weather. One of these years I'll learn the secret to lots of peas!

Broccoli (back), brussel sprouts (center), kale (front) and a leftover bell pepper to the right that just won't quit.

Collard greens (border), beets (center). Looks like I'm gonna do well for collards, as I was hoping! I can't wait to eat them smothered with bacon for Thanksgiving.

I found two russet plants peeking through the mass of sweet potato. I must have missed them when I harvested this summer. If they make more potatoes that would be ok with me!

 I have a little hope for my navel orange tree. To the left, this is the picture I took back in March of this year. And to the right, I took this today. it has greened up A LOT, has plenty of new growth and some of the leaves are massive (see below). I guess it must have heard my threats of being cut down if it didn't produce. OK Orange tree, you get another chance. No flowers next spring and you're gone!!

You got anything good growing in your garden this fall? Maybe next year I'll be more adventurous. I'm happy for a big plate of collards and some broccoli leaf wrapped meatballs.

Summer Recap

There's something about having a baby that just sucks the time out of your life, so the garden blog has been a bit on hold, but I did take some pictures through the summer of the harvests so I figured I'd share that. This season was amazingly amazing! Nearly every plant did not only well but exceptional. The only ones that didn't was the squash, watermelon, and lima beans. Check out the rest:

A good panoramic shot of my 256 sq foot garden. Still space to expand.

These turned out to be volunteer mini pumpkins. I think I harvested about 10 little pumpkins, two are surviving this day, although they are edible, I've just used them as decoration.

Zucchini grows pretty fast. This one was neglected while I was in the hospital having a baby, but it was still tasty, it hadn't grown too big or tough yet.

 Wound up harvesting 40 ears of corn, many stalks produced two ears! I've never had that happen before. Some were picked a little early because the corn ear worms were really bad this year.

Just growing, before things grew out of hand. I had a hard time keeping my plants in the beds this year they got so big.

During peak growing, this is a pretty typical day to day harvest.

Corn ear worm. The kids had fun finding them, they came in quite an array of colors. Thankfully while it was gross finding them, they didn't decimate the corn and so I still had lots of yummy corn to put away in the freezer.

My sunflower got huge this year, look at what a hot mess the rest of the garden is, it was growing out of control and trying to recover from birth I could not get a handle on it.

This was the potato yield of three plants. I didn't think it was that great.

 Then I pulled up the rest of the plants and in total weighed 15 lbs from 3 lbs of seed, So I think I did ok despite not doing anything but just planting them in the ground.

The first cantaloupe of many. So many cantaloupe and they were all huge!

After I took out the russet potatoes and squash, the ONE sweet potato plant took over, It's still out there growing and I can't contain it anymore. I don't know anything about growing sweet potatoes but I think you're supposed to dig them up and cure them when the plant starts to die, so I've just let it be alone, maybe in November I'll harvest it.

I even got a couple of gigantic figs to eat! MMM These are brown turkey figs... coupled with the persimmons my mom brought back from my grandma's house in Louisiana, it's a southern treat for these fruits that are a very rare find in grocery stores.

The kids love to help shuck corn.

For a while I had handful after handful of asparagus to eat. Next year is going to be even more awesome. I finally just stopped picking asparagus because I was tired of eating it!!

I had so many tomatoes I canned in total more than 2 dozen pints of salsa and another half dozen of spaghetti sauce.

The brown marmorated stink bugs were HORRIFIC this year. I desperately wanted to give away tomatoes but they were basically decimated by those terrible bugs, so I had to can the tomatoes, they were ugly but still edible.

My biggest tomato was a Cherokee chocolate. It was so yummy. I produced my biggest tomatoes ever this year, lots of really large slicers and I wasn't even aggressive about pruning. See more tomatoes and the mini pumpkins on the table in the background. That was spillover tomatoes. My counters are FULL.

The cucumbers came on a bit later than the tomatoes, but they got eaten up, my kids love cucumbers.

Another sampling of cantaloupes. They were SO sweet and juicy. You just can't find em like that in the grocery store. I was pretty sad that the watermelons didn't work out. The cantaloupe plants choked them out they grew so much faster.

And there you have it, an amazing Spring/Summer garden. I never did get out and plant okra, I'm sure it would have been mind boggling how well they would have done, I was just too exhausted and sleep deprived from caring for a newborn, Keeping up with picking and eating/canning the existing produce was all I could do.

The Garden Starts to Produce

My garden is officially in production mode. The harvest is beginning for green beans. It's also officially out of control. I know I planted a lot of stuff close together this year, but i'm a little anxious and overwhelmed at how out of hand it has gotten. Based on years past I just didn't expect my plants to do as well as they are. There just might be something to this Back to Eden/Deep mulch/No till/Ruth Stout/Lasagna Gardening method.

DS is super excited to have green beans for dinner. If you're starting out, this is a must have crop, it's so prolific, easy, early and satisfying to grow and they just produce and produce and produce as long as you keep picking.

I've got tomatoes coming out of my ears. Every one of my 13 plants is just heavy laden. I've already lost a lot to blossom end rot. We had quite a dry spell and then a TON of rain so they didn't like that.

 The plants grew out of control so fast, it's just a giant mass of tomato plants. I wasn't able to prune them very effectively. I'm pretty sure I'll have disease and pest issues because they're growing so densely, there isn't a lot of airflow around the plants. They're in the sunniest spot though so that should help with excess moisture evaporation.

Corn is just starting to tassle. I really should have laid down newspaper in this bed, the weeds are pretty thick. When this crop is through and I chop down the stalks, I'm going to lay newspaper and a new layer of mulch, hopefully eradicate those deep rooted weeds. Despite my spotty planting job this year, the stalks are all very green and happy looking.

Best looking peppers I've ever grown. They are really surprising me at how lush and green and tall they are getting. I've never had such happy looking pepper plants. These I think are California Wonder and they feel very thick walled and meaty. So happy with these results.

I can taste the bacon wrapped jalapenos already. This is another super easy to grow, high yield plant for beginners.

Totally loving this white eggplant. I was reading up that this is the original color of eggplant and how it got its name. Of my three eggplant plants, this one is doing the best. I'm excited to fry these guys up.

Peppers, sunflower, cantaloupes (really taking off and flowering well)  There's also watermelon, a tomato, eggplant and some mystery squashes running around in here.

Green bean patch, eggplant and cucumbers are making their way up the trellis. Males flowers are going crazy, I expect to be seeing some cucumbers growing soon as the female flowers are usually not far behind. So happy to be having cukes this year after last years pitiful disappointment. Can't see the limas on the other side but they're FULL of flowers. I think I might get a decent harvest from them this year.

Yellow crookneck. It's doing pretty good. Although this and the zucchini just really aren't fruiting well. I don't think they like the spot I put them in, not sunny enough. I might not get much out of them this year, I'm ok with that though.

See, the potato plants are just totally crowding the squash out, and this bed gets the least sun due to the maturing of the neighbor's trees. I think i might take out this bed next year and put in a new one on the other side of the tomatoes where there's lots of sun.

Lots of basil, I think it's time for some pesto! Oregano and thyme are just out of control as usual. The whole garden just is overflowing and growing like nuts. Seriously, i just can't believe how well everything is just growing. I haven't fertilized since the very begging when I put down the organic fertilizer under the mulch and the one application I did when the garden was a few weeks old.

The fig tree has never been so huge and lush. It's finally living up to its potential.  I haven't spotted any baby figs yet, it might be too early, but I sure hope it makes some this year.

DD's garden, full of weeds but some things are growing. You can tell the soil is still quite depleted here by how stunted everything is compared to my garden I've babied and enriched the last few years. I'm happy that the blueberries I planted are taking well - they should be ready to produce a few berries next year. I've got to keep an eye on the soil acidity and nutritional content for them. The baby limas I put in are also doing good because they fix their own nitrogen from the air. I'm hoping that'll help out the soil. I should put a new application of chicken poo fertilizer here and cover with mulch. I think I'll do that when the plants expire. The remaining blackberry plant actually looks like it's making a come back with some new growth.

My mystery squash plant. I don't know what variety this is. I thought most pumpkins start out green but this is staying yellow from the start like a crookneck summer squash. I'm not even sure how big I should let it get before I pick it and examine it. What's interesting is this one popped up far from the worm tower and the plant itself is not gigantic but it is flowering and fruiting quite profusely. Another plant popped up right next to a worm tower and the leaves and plant itself are just enormous and growing and growing but the flowers and fruits are far and few between. So that tells me the areas near the worm towers are high in nitrogen and there's more phosphorous away from the towers. That makes sense because I don't throw many carbons into the worm towers, just lots of high nitrogen food scraps.

Happy garden. I hope it stays that way when the blazing heat pounds it and the bugs don't get too bad. I've noticed a slug and a cucumber beetle this morning, wasn't happy about that. I'm sure the good bugs will show up when they're needed, I had plenty of them last year.