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?

Back home on Memorial Day

Came back home after being gone Wednesday afternoon through Monday day-time, and WOW! Garden explosion! In five days, significant growth all around. Check it out:

The radishes, mesclun mix, and arugula are all ready for harvest now, and the zucchini and a couple tomato plants are starting to show some blossoms.

It was late when we got home and we had almost nothing to eat in the house, so we raided the back yard and had an awesome salad of mixed greens with radishes and topped our pasta with home-grown basil.

It’s official – having a garden kicks ass.

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…

Updated radish pics

After installing Shags, I went ahead and got updated pics of the radishes. Lookin’ good!

Planted lettuces, onions and radishes

Sowed seeds for the following in the west raised bed:

• Radishes – French Breakfast – 1 4 ft. row
• Radishes – Cherry Belle – 1 4ft. row
• Green onion – Evergreen Bunching – 1 4 ft. row
• Lettuce – Mache – 1 4 ft. row
• Lettuce – Rouge d’Hiver – 1 4 ft. row
• Lettuce – Mesclun Mix – 1 4 ft. row
• Lettuce – Arugula – 1 4 ft. row