Pests and critters invade...

Greetings, friends! Well, it's almost July and the garden is coming along, if not entirely as expected. It is interesting to see what I have been able to grow and what hasn't done so well. It's hard not to feel a little twinge of failure when I see all of the seed packets for things I wanted to grow but didn't work - Swiss chard, for example. But on the other hand, it has been fun to see things that are growing well, and to come along some very unexpected surprises along the way (volunteer plants, which I wrote about last time).

Speaking of unexpected surprises, some kind of critter, or rather, a roving gang of many types of critters, is devouring my plants. Something (a cat? a horde of cats?) ate the ENTIRE catnip plant in about two days (it was a huge plant - 1/100 of the plant would have gotten my cat Bailey cracked out for days, so I'm guessing it was some other critter or I would have drugged-up cats rolling around in the front yard). Something ate most of the leaves on my eggplant plants, an entire tomato seedling (sadface!), and three of my bell pepper plants. I don't think it's a bug pest because the entire plant is getting eaten. Anyone have any guesses about what it could be? The geek in me wants to set up a night-vision webcam to catch whatever it is in action!


Bell pepper buds/flowers

The bell pepper plants that survived the critter night-eating are growing bigger, and one of them has these little buds that are getting ready to bloom into flowers - and then grow into little peppers! VERY exciting!



Sunflower!

My big sunflower also has a little flower bud- which means that a real sunflower is imminent! The sunflower plant is now officially taller than the fence (will post a picture next time). I swear it has been growing at least an inch a day! I love flowers more than anything and I can't wait to come home and see a sunflower that I grew blooming in my garden!



What MITE be eating my plants?

A couple of my plants had been slowly yellowing, and I assumed it was somehow related to the soil quality or excessive watering. But the plants became more and more yellow, and not all of them seemed to be affected (for example, the bell pepper plants are very healthy and not yellow at all). I did some research and it turns out that spider mites are to blame! They are microscopic little critters in the arachnoid family, and they're apparently very common and very hard to get rid of. They puncture the cells in your plant and suck out the liquid. You can either pesticide-bomb your garden (not an option) or spray each individual leaf with water to wash the mites off. I'm doing that (when I remember, and so far it might be helping) - but in the meantime I removed a couple of bean plants that were severely infested. My roommate suggested spraying the plants with garlic-infused water as a mite deterrent. Anyone else have any suggestions?



My first bean!
I started this gardening project back in March when it was still in the 40s at night... and last week I picked my first bean! It is green with a few little purple streaks here and there.

Beans are really easy to grow, and they grow really fast. Here is a picture of the beans I planted three weeks ago - they're already huge and climbing up the fence!





Okra seedlings

In other news - I didn't have much luck growing most of my veggies from seed, but one of the seeds that did seem to sprout pretty readily and grow quickly is okra. These are some okra seedlings I planted in the ground today - we'll see how they do! It might be too late to plant seedlings and have them grow into real plants, but who knows. It's worth a shot! And I absolutely loooooove okra (it's such a fun vegetable, both to look at and to eat!)


Stevia plant

Have you heard of stevia? I had heard of it but thought it was some sort of newfangled (yes, I just said 'newfangled') artificial sweetener. Well as it turns out, it's a type of plant! I saw this little herb at a local nursery the other day and it's a stevia plant. I decided that it would be a worthy science experiment for $3 to buy it and try to help it grow and see what happened. I tasted one of the leaves, and darn if it didn't taste incredibly sweet and just like sugar! I'm going to try and brew some iced tea with the leaves once the plant gets settled (I put it in a pot with some dirt next to my other herbs).


That's all for this post... thanks for checking out what is Blooming in Bloomingdale! :)

Back like WHOA

and.... I'm back! It has been a crazy couple of weeks/months and I have neglected my garden. But things have calmed down a bit so I was able to get in the dirt and get some things done this weekend!

First things first... it is a lot harder to grow things from seed than I thought! A lot of my seeds sprouted but didn't do a whole lot after that. Some things eventually became little plants (my beans and peas for example) but other things (all of the herb seeds, cabbage, chard, and beet seeds) never got past the sprout stage. I stopped watering things at some point and I'm sure that didn't help. Anyway, I threw in the towel and decided to buy actual plants this weekend.

NEW PLANTS

Red, orange, yellow and green bell pepper plants (who's coming over for fajitas later this summer? :)

Herbs (left to right: English thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, dill (growing from seed), and basil - all in the random selection of pots I found around the house

Eggplants! I love eggplant but have not had much luck cooking it well (anyone have eggplant-cooking tips?)


NOT NEW PLANTS

Pole beans

There were a few little purple flowers and there are some teeny tiny beans growing on the plants now... very exciting! I planted some more beans along the fence (where the peas used to be) so hopefully those will sprout and start climbing. Peas love cold weather and I started them too late (apparently you're supposed to start them in February) - but I did get a few little peas (and they were delicious). Here's a picture of one:

Pea plant... with pea!

And finally... my sunflower plants did the best out of everything, because in spite of not being watered they grew like WHOA. The biggest one is over two feet tall already! (The seed packet says they can grow up to six feet tall)



Sunflowers I can't wait to see what colors the flowers will be (they come in all variations of red, yellow and orange)


VOLUNTEER PLANTS: update

One of the most interesting things about this gardening experience so far is the unexpected role my compost has played in what grows in the garden. Several things I did not intentionally plant have grown from vegetable/fruit that was in my compost. My volunteer plants include melons/cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes. In my last blog post, the top photo is of some seedlings that came up, which I thought were honeydew melon (they looked exactly like melon seedlings... check out this photo from a seed company to see a picture that I thought confirmed my judgment of what type of seeds they were). I weeded those seedlings out because melon plants are huge and sprawl and I have limited space. Anyway, I was at Home Depot yesterday and I saw these seedlings:

Cucumber plants

The cucumber seedlings look exactly like the volunteer plants in my garden. So now I'm wondering if they were actually honeydew melon or if they were cucumbers! I decided to let one grow to find out (why not).

The other surprise I found in the garden yesterday were three little tomato plants. Here is a picture of the biggest one:

Volunteer tomato plant

I think it is funny that these volunteer plants grew so well and so quickly, when the ones I planted from seed took months to grow and are still smaller than the volunteers!
The tomato plant I grew from seed

Bailey
I forgot that I have this ridiculous harness/leash thing for Bailey (my roommate and I got it for him in college when he was a kitten and we wanted to let him roam around in our backyard). So I let him hang out outside while I worked in the garden. He enjoyed his little field trip outside and had a grand old time rolling around on the cement and eating the neighbor's grass.

AND FINALLY...

The other things I did this weekend included:
- planted nasturtium seeds in between the sunflowers (in spite of planting them twice, the sunflowers just did not want to grow in certain spaces along the front of the fence... so I'm wondering if maybe nasturtiums will? Plus, the flowers are edible in addition to being gorgeous!) I've had good luck sprouting both of this type of seeds in potting soil/seedling trays, but who knows how they will do in the ground.

- planted onion seeds near the fence next to the pole beans
- weeded out tons of grass, clover, and other little plants that were enjoying my soil during my gardening hiatus

View of my garden from the steps after a weekend of hard work...

That's all... thanks for checking out what's Blooming in Bloomingdale! :-)