2014 Gardening Resolutions
January 1st is traditionally the time of year for resolutions, but as far as my garden goes, we’re coming up on the bitter end now. Generally, I’m very pleased with my first real attempt at gardening! I’m still proud as punch over my sub-irrigated planter, which works pretty fabulously except for the drain getting clogged…
Yellow Cucumbers
Unlike some garden vegetables, cucumbers can be a bit of a puzzle. Cucumbers don’t give as many obvious cues to a novice gardener that they’re ready to pick, and a great many ailments of the cucumber plant present similar symptoms. If your cucumbers are turning yellow, but the fruit is large and it and the…
RIP Tomatoes, I felt I hardly knew ye.
Flea Beetle
Photo by: James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster Unfortunately, not all of my garden insects are as relatively undestructive as the velvet mites and swallowtail caterpillars. Fortunately, it appears that (in my garden) the most destructive pest’s preferred plants of choice are extremely limited, and my tomatoes are blithely unfazed that something is hole-ing their older…
Black Swallowtail Caterpillars, Scourge of Dill
Fertilizing a Sub-Irrigated Planter (Update, end of June)
Red Velvet Mites
I apologize for going quiet over the weekend; we had company, a windstorm that required my attention in the garden, and a puzzle over a garden bug. I’ve already decided, by the way, that next year, I’m definitely not growing tomatoes in the planter. I swear I watched them grow two inches overnight in this…
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
I fully admit, the general success of the self-watering planter I built has made me a little lazy on the gardening front. It’s been a relatively quiet time in my garden since I cut down what remained of my spinach plants, froze them, and turned them into pizza topping for my father’s day grilled pizza experiment. (Yum!)…
Spinach Leafminer
I saw these flies around my garden about a month ago, but I paid them no real attention. I thought they were ordinary house flies. Boy was I wrong! Observe: the adult phase of the Spinach Leafminer (picture from Wikipedia.org), which began attacking my spinach a few weeks ago. Even then, I didn’t pay much attention…