Score one for the good guys

The picture says it all.

OK, maybe not — if you can’t tell, those are parasitic wasp larvae on a tomato hornworm.  That’s right, good guys!  After all the pests and diseases that have attacked the garden this year, nature finally lent us a hand.

Revenge!

Quick update — found this in the garden this morning:

This is what you get for messing with my tomatoes!

Tomatoes get their turn

Well, it seems like there have been problems throughout the garden but the tomatoes have skated by mostly unscathed … until now.

Other post-vacation garden updates

Other news from around the garden:

• Shaggy (the Cherokee Purple tomato) had a bad accident while we were gone too – one of his main vines either got too heavy or got whipped around in the wind, and snapped completely. When I went to cut it off with my knife, I think I snagged the stem and dug into it. Hopefully poor Shags doesn’t mind a few nicks and scratches.

• The lettuce pest I mentioned the other day turned out to be a cabbage looper (as identified via e-mail by my wonderfully helpful local university extension office). They recommend I use a BT-based pesticide to help remove them. I picked up some Thuricide at the local garden center and sprayed it on the lettuces. This seemed to help for a bit but I noticed a few more eggs and caterpillars in the garden yesterday, so I guess it’s an ongoing process.

• We also returned to find a minor aphid infestation (also identified by the extension’s master gardeners) on the Black Cherry tomato plant…

I sprayed some homemade insecticidal soap on them (lighter formula this time) and that seemed to take care of them.

Full garden photo round-up (couple days old) after the jump.

Fresh caviar and more additions

You’d think fresh caviar’s a good thing, right? Not so much.

Aphid infestation, zucchini breakup, and the end of the radishes

Well, I did finally spare some energy for the garden over the weekend, despite the stubborn illness that would not go away.  Stepped out on the deck to find the parsley lookin’ not-so-good:

See those little green buggers on the leaves?  Pretty sure those are aphids … and they were all over the plant.  The sources I read said “remove and destroy affected parts of the plant” or use insecticidal soap.  Since the entire plant was “affected”, I decided to try out option 2 (and move it away from the other herbs).

The good news?  The aphids appear to be gone (now several days later).  Bad news – I think I had too much “soap” in my mix, because a lot of the plant looked “burned” (lots of leaves with yellowed spots and edges).  I removed the “burned” parts of the plant and hopefully it will recover.

I also made some time to thin out the zucchini jungle.  Everything I’d read about zucchini said that they’re extremely prolific plants and take up a bunch of space, so you better love zucchini if you plant them.  Well, I ordered one plant, with that in mind, but ended up with 4.  To remind you, when we first planted them, they looked like this (05/04/08):

Less than a month later (06/01/08), they looked like this:

I’m tellin’ you, these things are freakin’ jungle plants.  It’s pretty impressive.

I like zucchini, but I don’t want that much zucchini, and I also don’t want it taking over the beans and tomatoes – I like those waaay more.  So we decided to keep one plant, as far away from everything else as possible.  We threw 2 of the plants in the compost collection, and transplanted the other one to a bucket for transport to Independence Hell (yep – Bing’s house).  After the eviction, the keeper breathed a huge sigh of relief and now has no less than 5 zucchinis rapidly maturing for our pleasure and is trying his best to fill up all the empty space.

On a final note, we finally harvested the remainder of the radishes.  They were starting to get too big in the ground and some of them had split.  Note to self – do not plant 2 rows of radishes at one time ever again.  Turns out, that’s a ton of radishes.  We gave a bunch of them to our neighbors and we still have way too many to eat.

To do – fill up the empty space near the zucchini (maybe another bush bean plant) and fill up the empty space where the radishes and failed carrots were.  I’m open to ideas on the latter space.  What’s a good summer veg to transplant this time of year?

Update on infestation (updated)

No sign of spider mites today (only saw a couple yesterday morning), and no flies crawling around in the west bed. I credit this to the fact that I went through the trouble of making insecticidal soap.

Update on update: turns out, the spider mites are still very much here … guess they prefer the sun to the cool mornings.  I saw a bunch of them on the rocks again when I got home ~7ish.  I sprayed ‘em with my makeshift soap, didn’t seem to do much.

The infestation theme continues … and we planted some beans

First up, we have a frequent visitor to the garden (and house) now … his name is Pepe Le Pew and he’s pretty camera shy. This is the best shot I could get so far:

He showed up yesterday actually inside the house – Gabby tracked him down while he was checking out Leeloo’s bed. I shoo’ed him out several minutes later but now he keeps hangin’ round the deck. Dude loves hangin’ out in the sun but does not want to stand still for his glamour shot.

In other news, tonight I went out back to plant the Blue Lake bush beans .. and encountered some other most definitely unwelcome visitors in the ornamental bed right by the veg beds (large picture warning).

From what I can tell, they look like red spider mites. I’ve attached the uncompressed picture so someone can help me identify them. Google tells me this is not a great sign. Looks like the best treatment option is insecticidal soap. Since I don’t have any just yet (perhaps I can make some), I went ahead and blasted them off the rocks with the hose. We’ll see if they show up again tomorrow.

I did get the green beans planted though (in the east bed) – 1 4 ft. row, give or take (had to work around the soaker hose).

Fifty-five days later and we might be eating some beans.

Fly infestation and baby radish bites

Both raised beds are now crawling with flies of some sort. I noticed it first yesterday but didn’t get a picture … today I came prepared. I tried getting several shots of them in the soil, but my camera couldn’t focus and I couldn’t see the LCD. Finally we got one in hand and snapped a shot:

What the heck are these? At first I thought they might be carrot flies, since the carrot seeds (and now seedlings) went everywhere. But the timing and the look doesn’t seem quite right. Could these have come with the compost I got from Missouri Organic?

Whatever the case, there are probably dozens of them crawling over the beds. I haven’t seen them eating anything but it doesn’t seem like a good sign.

I also noticed quite a few spider webs up in the tomato trellis; I left those there in the hopes they’d catch some flies.

While we were down there this morning, we also checked on the radishes – the packet says they should be close to ready for harvest (28 days). We pulled one of each:

Looks like they need a bit more time, but that didn’t stop someone from having a bite…

Attack on the carrots!

Some … thing … attacked the carrots while I was at work today. I came home to a big, dug-up hole on the edge of the west bed.

The carrots haven’t been doing so well even without this awesome help, so this does not increase our hopes of a bountiful carrot harvest.

No idea what did the deed, but my guess is a squirrel or rabbit. Too early in the day for raccoons, and too big of a mess for a bird. My temporary solution, until I go shopping, is to spray down the side of the bed with predator urine (mine) every night. It probably won’t make any difference other than making me feel like I’m doing something about it. And it should help my popularity with the ladies on the block.