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| lettuce 9 days old |
Flea beetles have been the most common garden pest for us lately; devouring everyone's cabbage, kale, and broccoli plants. I had to remove the sad remains of two broccoli plants yesterday and replaced them with two healthy broccoli plants (I've continued growing some broccoli, tomato, and pepper seedlings in my basement). My plot neighbor told me that the worst is over now and we don't expect the flea beetles to continue to be a problem. One organic flea beetle remedy I learned: sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the plants - this will kill the beetles but poses no danger to warm blooded critters.
Yesterday I planted eight sweet pepper and two extra tomato seedlings. I also had to replace a tomato seedling that went MIA (have the evil bunnies penetrated the community garden fort walls?).
In other news, sometimes I don't wear gloves.
Next up: here's a recent shot of the garden from today. On the top left are tomatoes, then peppers, and a lovely patch of redroot pigweeds on the far right. On the bottom left, barely visible, is the new cucumber trellis Bryan built for me today, broccoli in the middle, and lettuce on the far right. These redroot weeds completely took over the entire garden plot, and yesterday I spent a couple hours removing them, except for a small patch in the spot where I had planted my spinach seeds. Unfortunately, only three spinach plants came up and after my community garden director told me that these redroot weeds are edible and Native Americans used to eat them, I decided to keep a few. Today I added some to my salad mix and they were tasty! But, seriously, they can live up to 40 years in the soil? One plant produces over 100,000 seeds? I have a feeling I'll be spending many more hours weeding this summer... I should probably put some mulch down between plants. I may end up removing that last patch to plant some pole beans in their place.
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| prolific cucumbers |
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| lettuce close-up 22 days old |
Thanks for reading!
