I Hate Bad Bugs!

I Found These on the Underside of a few Potato Plants Today!

This is going to be a rather morbid post. Between the heat and the bad-bug killing spree...just let it be said that you have been forewarned.

Today was H-O-T! High 80's and very humid. But I worked in the garden anyway. It was a quiet 4th of July here so after preparing for our cookout I worked in the garden. I just planned to reinforce tomatoes to their stakes and to tie up cauliflower. Tying up the large cauliflower leaves up over the plant blanches the cauliflower as it grows, making the head a nice white. In the photo below you can see how I just used some twine and tied the big leaves up over the top to shade the growing cauliflower flower. Yes, when you eat cauliflower or broccoli you are eating the flowering part of the plant!
Then I noticed the peas all dropping over and tried to put a few more stakes in the pea fencing but that didn't work. A lot of the pea vines broke right in half from the weight from all the peas! It is obvious that chicken wire fencing and posts at either end is just not enough support.

You can see in the right side of the photo above how that pea vine is bent right in half. I don't think it can continue growing like that. Stems of plants are like the nutrient highways. Think celery and colored sugar water set ups you did as a kid. When the stem of a plant is broken, the nutrient highway has become disabled causing that plant to eventually die. Leaves, on the other hand, are the power houses of the plant, transforming sun's energy and water from the air into sugar, aka food. Since there are more than one leaf on a plant a plant can live if a leaf dies. But not if the stem dies. That is why if you are transplanting seedlings the method that is recommended is to take gentle hold of the seedling by the leaves not by the stem and transplant holding onto the leaves.

Anyway, back to the peas in front of me: note to self, next year, stronger and taller fencing and more posts. The fencing I used this year was only 3 feet tall. Not tall enough. Well I guess I can focus on the fact that the plants are falling over and I can't get them to stay up or I can focus on the fact that the reason they are falling over is because they are so darn full of so many large, succulent, and sweet peas! I'll go with the last :) Last chore was to check out the pumpkins in the upper garden. They were loaded with those gosh darn cucumber beetles still!!!! There were so many of them and they were just partying away. I squished as many as I could but they just kept flying away. Darn buggers!! And the pumpkin plants look like they are wilting. Not good. After I killed as many as I could I went to check the potatoes because I guess I just felt like a glutton for punishment today and it just seems like that time to begin finding those potato beetles. And sure enough I found some eggs just like in the photo above. I just folded the leaves over and squished them too. I found 1 large adult Colorado Potato Beetle and used two rocks to squish that bugger. It must have been the heat! After this massive killing spree I couldn't take it anymore and jumped into the pool to cool off. It felt fantastic. The water was a balmy 66 degrees F. Ha! It was cold but felt fantastic and incredibly refreshing.

Finally, after some swimming I put bird netting up over the blueberry bushes. I only have 8 of them and they are 3 years old this year. I've never allowed them to set berries until this year. The first 2 years I picked the flowers off, sending energy used to flower and fruit back to the roots to build the roots up. This year is berry picking year! And I want to get to those ripe blueberries before the birds do so netting went up. And guess what!? I did it all wrong. Ugh! Time for another swim in the pool. I was silly enough to just put the netting right on the bushes. But when I came back in and researched it online I see that I should have built a simple, crude structure of some sort to put the netting over so that the netting isn't sitting right on the blueberry bushes. Logical. Will work on that again tomorrow.

Lovely and Sweet Smelling German Chamomile - Matricaria recutita - a tiny, delicate daisy looking annual that self sows profusely :)

The garden can be a magical and wonderful respite. But as today demonstrates, it can also be a challenging and difficult encounter. Just breath, do what needs to be done, and walk away from it. It'll still be there in all its glory to enjoy tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be peas to pick, chamomile to smell, mint to snip for iced tea, cilantro to put in the salsa, and some lettuce, scallions, spinach, and calendula blossoms to pick for salads.

Remember, gardens make the world clean and fresh. Enjoy your garden,
Mary