The Small Garden

A list that will be updated as things come up:

1. Get sugar snap peas out earlier.
2. Fertilize the sugar snap peas more.
3. Get soil from Western Gardens, and look for composted materials in soil
4. When transplanting seedlings in peat moss starters, plant them DEEP! (soil constantly washed off starters, so they stuck up through the top of soil level of the containers).
5. Don't start cilantro and watermelon so early.
6. Don't start sugar snap peas inside
7. Try row covers for insects
8. Plant flowers sooner to get beneficial insects in
9. Start chives and onions right out in the containers and in more sun
10. Get mulch.
11. Don't put so much soil in the window boxes
12. Put more soil in the other containers.
13. Add a wick to the bottom of large containers and set them up on blocks so the wick can drain the container.
14. Try planting peppers with half a book of matches under the plant and crushed, dried eggshells for sulfur and calcium, respectively.

Hooray for this guy! I am excited to find them in my little garden. There were two, but I think one ate the other. Another downfall (ha! actually quite literally) is that D was moving the peach this morning, which is next to the railing. In an unfortunate event, D saw the mantis dive bomb off the peach and our third floor balcony. I think I heard all the "bad guys" enthusiastically cheer when that occurred.

Zorak would be proud of that dive bomb.

(Space Ghost's evil co-host on his Coast-to-Coast show).

Here are some insects I am not sure about:

So this guy I wrote about earlier is not good, I saw it listed in a book I got from the library, but I can't remember what it was called.

Pretty cool webbing, though. I still took him off. I don't care how cool his house is.

And my apple and raspberry are not doing so hot- just showing a few small signs of stress (raspberry obviously showing more signs than the apple). The apple is not really putting out many new leaves, but is still green (water problems?) and the raspberry is just sad. The fruit all have mites or something in them when I pull them off the plant. Uggh. Who wants to eat that? I tried floating them off, but never saw them rise to the surface. I think they just burrowed into the fruit instead. I cut a LOT of the raspberry back today. I cut off all the fruit. I know you are not supposed to prune in the middle of the growing season, but I was really concerned about it making it at all. I cleared out all the lettuce growing underneath; hopefully all this will help it have more circulation and sunlight reaching it.

Apple-

Raspberry-

The peas are all gone now and I've cleared out the vines to make way for the beans (soy and some Christmas-colored bean) that have already gotten pretty large. I had planted some a while back when I saw the beans were going, but I think many of them didn't make it while I was in Canada. (Many things were dying when I came back.) So I replanted, and they seem to be doing fine now. Watermelons JUST started to show up on their vines, wow... that's a long time coming. Still no sign of cucumbers, and tomatoes are still green. A couple had blossom-end rot (Speckled Siberian, or whatever it is called), so I cut off the worst ones, which was hard to do as they were large. Wonder if it's lack of calcium or the uneven watering while I was away? Hopefully I can avoid that from future ones. Harvested my first batch of marjoram, wow- it's full of flavor. A little goes a LONG way. I loved it! I cooked it with sweet potatoes.

Marjoram drying-

The cucumbers have tiny yellow spots all over them, the marigolds are COVERED with them, but they all seem to still be growing. Saw a couple of leaf-hoppers, so this may be the problem. Also, there are tiny thrips all over the undersides of the cucumbers leaves. I tried to remove as many as possible, but it's hard. Ended up spraying with organic spray. I still don't like using it. The lemon cucumber also has a nice sized split in its stem, but for the life of me, I can't find any info anywhere about why it did that. It's not a grub (that was the most common answer). Not sure what I should do about it, but the plant seems to be growing fine even with it.

The beans have some leaves that are being scrunched together, almost like aphids, but there are none to be seen. Must be some other juice-sucking varmint. Perhaps leaf-hoppers or thrips as well?

Everything else is looking great, mostly. That's the update for now!