Stink Bugs!

I'm learning a lot about garden pests this year - I'm using these attacks on our garden as educational opportunities, and hopefully I'll be more prepared next year. First it was squash bugs - now it is stink bugs. Apparently they like beans - that's where I found them.

I haven't had a lot of luck with beans this year, but that's mostly my fault. I got a late start this year and my focus was on other vegetables. I also killed half of my beans with some overzealous use of roundup. I had a ton of weeds I was trying to get rid of close to my raised beds. I thought I did a good job of keeping it out of the garden, but obviously not. Half of my pole beans have died and now the other half are being attacked by stink bugs.

According to my master gardener training manual, stink bugs like beans, tomatoes and curcubits - cucumber, squash, zucchini, pumpkin and watermelon. Also they may damage sweet corn. According to the book, the best way to control them is with pesticides. My corn and tomatoes are planted close by - I'll have to keep an eye out for stink bugs on them.

My Week of Not Gardening

I had the past week off with the intent of doing some serious gardening, but it did not happen. School was over for our daughter the week before, which meant that it was about the first time since Xmas I had more than one day to sleep in, and boy, did I! I was so unmotivated in the mornings. By midday, it was 90 degrees and humid - then it would rain buckets in the evening. Everything I planned to do involved digging in the dirt - or, this week - MUD.

Thinking I had a full plate this week, I did a few of those things last week instead. I edged the driveway and walkway. It didn't take too long and the satisfaction I got from it was good. The same goes for weeding the desert garden. Leftover grass and weeds keep rearing their ugly heads and I wanted to make it presentable when my mom and grandmother visit at the end of the week. Grass had invaded my sedum patch and I had to pull it out from the roots, nearly one blade at a time, so I didn't destroy the sedum. Any future weeds and grass will be thoroughly Roundupped!

I should have know what kind of week it was going to be from the way Monday went. I talked to my dad a few weeks ago about visiting some family land to gather some plants for the yard. I quizzed him over t he phone about what plants I wanted and he thought this property had it all - ferns, orchids, pitcher plants. Many chiggers and tick bites later, there was only one type of fern, but my dad enjoyed himself riding us around which was a good thing.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't write anymore about this week. It wasn't very good and I'm finishing this entry about six weeks after it happened. I wish I could say it's because I've been hard at work in the gardening, but I can't. I'm afraid that TV and these hot Charleston summers have made me procrastinate. I promise that in the near future I will be posting more about our little piece of the world.