Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Midsummer garden update


Keeping up with a garden in the middle of the summer can be a real chore. Right now, we are trying to plant a few new plants to continue our harvest on into the summer. Our new squash plants are looking really good and we are trying to keep these plants from the bugs that are plentiful this year in the garden.


We are having plenty of hot banana peppers, but not enough jalapenos.


These bell pepper plants are doing well and I expect to harvest a good deal more before the first frost.


Okra is a great crop for hot weather. It is amazing how much okra you can grow if the deer can't get to your crop. Deer really love okra. I am so thankful that the deer hate our electric fence.


We are still getting tomatoes. I am seeing some dark spots on some of the leaves, which is a concern to me. We are cutting off the bad leaves and discarding them in case it is a fungus. Maybe we can contain it. I sure hope so. Meanwhile, we are still getting plenty of tomatoes.


I love this photo of cherry tomatoes. They grow all over the plant and the leaves are very lush and pretty.


One of the most frustrating things that happened this past week is that we found all of these little eggs that had been laid on our squash leaves. Honestly, after our squash had been attacked by squash vine borers, we just couldn't believe we were being infested by something else. Unfortunately, these are eggs laid by squash bugs. We even saw some of the nymphs that had hatched. They look like little spiders and are a little scary looking. We picked all the eggs off and sprayed. Hopefully we stopped the squash bugs from overwhelming us.

If we didn't have an organic garden, these pests wouldn't be so bad. It is a little harder to take care of them with organicide and neem oil, but we are giving it a try. Picking the eggs off by hand might take awhile but that is also an effective method.

Our beans are not doing very well. Last year it was our best crop and this year, our beans are not looking good. We did plant another row of beans. We also planted some late corn, some pumpkins and some gourds. Hopefully we will still have a harvest of beans and squash, if things go well.

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