The Garden Plot

It sure sounds like beetle larve to me.  Then can wipe out a fair size of area in a few days and never be seen if you aren't there every day.

Our market gardens are way behind this year too due to cool weather.  The corn is especially backwards.  Still a good several weeks before we can even think about picking.

Had some heirloom beans today called Tongue of Fire - they are a broad bean with red splashes.  Very yummy and very popular at market.  Our cut flower rows are finally starting to bloom too which adds a nice palet of colour to the place.

We had an "accidental" cherry tomato plant come up in a flower garden last year, certainly from a seed imported with some compost we bought.  It  was prolific, and the tomatoes were great.  So, I put the odd tomato that got over ripe in the herb garden at the end of last year, thinking  if the seed grew that easy, then the only trouble I'd have with them this year would be thining them out.

Not one sprout.  Nada.

Anyway, al-Qa'bong, potato blight is happening in Ontario and other places this year due to cold and wet weather.  I forget where you are located, but maybe this is your problem.  If so, there's an important protocol to follow if you do have the blight, to make sure it doesn't stay in the soil and infect next years crop.

I had never heard of kousa before. Looking it up, I think it might be the vegetable from the squash family known as marrow to those of British ancestry. Or is it another squash family variation?

Here in Toronto, the rodents are running wild, probably due to the garbage strike. Newly nervy squirrels come right up the back deck (taunting the vicious cat that we keep leashed) to rip green tomatoes off the plants. The yellow tomato plant has been ravaged, and is just recovering and coming up with a second set of flowers, having been torn back to half its size when the first two bunches of fruit were stolen.

The cherry tomato plant has fared much better. It's approaching 5' tall (and towers over me, standing in its 2' tall pot). The squirrels hit it regularly too, but they seem to be able to pick off the small fruit easily, and thus don't shred its branches. Despite the raids, there are still 50 or 60 green tomatoes coming, and that many more flowers besides. Haven't had a single one ripen yet, though.

Due to huge shade trees over the property, the only success we've had with vegetables has been in our pots on the sunny back deck. the herb garden is doing nicely this year, though.

 Things are behind but I also did get some things in this year. My cool weather crops are doing fabulous this year and still growing strong. I have a bumper crops of peas. I tried broccoli and cabbage this year again, having never had much success. Wow. This year the broccoli has been fabulous and really tasty.  I just finished harvesting the side shoots the other day. I wish I had planted more then just four plants. My cabbage plants are about four feet across with some of the leaves a good foot and half in size.  Since I have never grown it myself before I have been asking people if this is normal cause in the books it says it's not. It's really screwed up my garden plan in terms of spacing because I had planned to plant some other crops around them and now there is no room. LOL. 

 There just seems to be something with my soil and I'm learning to adjust to it as I go along in terms of spacing. It seems to grow dinosaur plants. The interesting thing is that I did do some tests on nutrients and the test results showed really low in nitrogen and potassium which at least according to common garden wisdom should result in poorer plants.  I redid it three times because it just didn't seem right in terms of what actually goes on in my garden.  It's an intriging mystery and when I have time I plan to do some more looksee into the complexities of soil science to try to figure it out.

I redid my beds this year and raised them up, hopefully to help with drainage issues in early spring. I was lax though in getting weedbarrier down in the paths and like the veggies they are lush and crazy. In hindsight I'm glad I didn't get to it as now that I'm getting the barrier down I keep finding tomato plants growing whereever they felt like it. I think by last count there's more then those I actually planted and they seem to be at least 5 different varieties. They are actually doing better then most of the ones I planted as well.  It's making staking a bit interesting and I'm having to get a bit creative because if last year is any indication they'll be getting a lot bigger then they are now.  It's hard to tell though because overall tomatos and other warm weather crops are just a whole lot slower this year.  My cucumbers have been inching along and I doubt I'll be getting any peppers this year unless I get them under protection in the fall.  I'm planning to save the seed from the tomatoes that have just popped up.

 Last year I had no luck with beans. Something kept eating them before they got to their second leaves. This year both the pole and bush beans are growing though most have some of the leaves chewed.  I have heard from others in the area that they're not having a good year. I know at least three people who said there beans never even sprouted which is weird.

 I got my potatoes in really late but they are growing like crazy now. I have to hill them today actually.  I had a couple of plants just pop up in the area I planted them last year and they have produced yummy new potatoes. 

 I do have bugs chomping at my plants but not to the point where they seem to be hampering their growth. I've had some difficultly figuring out what they might be as there has been no evidence of some of the most common ones. I thouht it my be earwigs and I'm just not seeing them because they're out at night but when I put out some trap things, there was only one or two in them.  My garden however is filled with roly poly bugs. Everything I read about them says they are basically detrious eaters and don't eat 'green' things except when they are really small, which is one of the reasons I didn't focus initially on them.  As with many things though my garden experience seems to be an exception and it does appear that they are the culprits and are chomping on even the most mature plants.   Since they don't seem to be bent on complete destruction I'm not freaking out about them but do need to do something eventually.  Since there are probably hundreds of thousands of the things around elimination is likely out of the question.  I might be able to get them out of the garden and new ones will just move in from the surrounding forest and marsh.  I've done some research on methods of reduction and most take a heck of a lot of work.  Chickens love them but I can't put them in the garden until it's done growing though a post plant and pre-plant chicken workover would likely help numbers wise. I'm thinking or trying a couple of guineas for the next growing season. I've been reading about people who have them in both veggie and flower gardens. They apparently eat potato and japanese beetles which would be awesome.

I think it's probably a losing battle to try to control wood lice, or pill bugs or as you call them, rolly polly bugs.  (This bug seems to have a lot of names)  I've never bothered with them.  I think even if the young ones eat green stuff, they probably still wiegh heavily on the benificial side because of their ability to break down woody fibers and turn them into compost-- without one having to do any shoveling or anything.

There's a holly hock growing at the back of my garden, and something ate all the leaves-- leaving a tracery of the internal arteries behind.   A smaller one, likely a first year holly hock, growing beside it, has been left alone.

My back yard is wasp central this summer.  I don't remember another year quite like it.  Right now, both  the native wasps  and yellow jackets are hunting insects, and are likely keeping the populations significantly down.   They're not a problem now, however the yellow jackets will turn to looking for sweet things in about a month, and that's what brings us into contact with them. 

I've been tollerant of the native wasps because they aren't aggressive at any time of year,  and it was my thinking that they'd help keep the yellow jackets down-- if not by direct warfare, then by resource competition.

And, I just caught Spike the cat using an Oak sapling as a scratching post.   It's been at the back, growing for about a dozen years right from  the acorn.  It's really taken off in the past three years though, and now it's over eight feet tall. 

Next time I get a cardboard roll from gift wrap or something similar, I think I'll slit it down the middle and wrap it around the place where Spike is scratching the bark. 

Unless anyone here has a better idea. That doesn't include violence to Spike.  He's an exempilary mouser.

They are beneficial Tommy and I think one of the reasons there's so many around my place and in my garden is because there is a veritable feast of organic matter to break down, which garden wise is great in terms of soil health.  I don't want to eliminate them from the garden but maybe just lower the number. It's more about balancing it out a bit. I could get rid of several thousand a day and I doubt that would barely make a dent in the overall numbers.  I think snakes eat them as well and I sure do have a lot of snakes.  Last year I accidently discovered what seems to be a perfect human made snake house and nursery so next year I'm thinking of putting one in the center of every bed to encourage them. I'm also building several little pond beds to encourage the frogs and toads to make there way over to the garden from the area they already are.    I may end up just using barriers around the green stuff that asthetically may be an issue in terms of eating,  like on my chard. The leaves are really holely but that plant itself doesn't seem to be suffering.  I personally don't mind eating leaves with holes in them but to some it's a real turn off.  They don't seem to go after the different lettuce plants so at least that's not a problem.

Re Spike.  If he's anything like my cat cardboard won't stop him. It's just another material to sink his claws into and tear up. I don't think they're too expensive but you can get plastic sapling protectors that are used to keep deer and bunnies from chewing. That might work better.

This am I was greeted with a big surprise as I walked out to the garden, a nice big Massaugua Rattler, coiled and sunning itself on the sandy path.  Very cool as it is a threatened snake. Not so cool as now I have to work using snake precautions. No more garden sandals for me!  I've been surfing the net and note some of the recovery programs and it appears that this one is on the edge of the range where it's been documented to still exist so I'm going to contact the nearest program people to report it and see if there is anything I should do or not do to make sure it can continue to  make a go of it.