Cross-striped Cabbageworm Caterpillar

Once again I have severely neglected my vegetable garden - until I resolve the chicken issue, I have only a few beds to plant right now, and they are a little inconvenient.  Back in August I transplanted broccoli there, and it has suffered in the waning days of summer.  I went out there recently and found that they were being eaten by lots of caterpillars.  Despite the demise of the broccoli, I was excited(?) to find another pest to learn about.

I soon figured out that the pest was the Cross-striped cabbageworm caterpillar - not knowing why it was called a cabbageworm, I decided to look it up. They are called cabbageworms, because they feed on cabbage and other cole crops like mustard, cauliflower, turnips, radishes, and broccoli.

At first glance, I only saw a few here and there, but there was significant damage - on further inspection, I found tons of caterpillars on the underside of the leaves.  The odd thing was that there were completely untouched plants next to ones that were skeletonized.  On the untouched plants, I found what looked like egg clusters.

Caterpillars can be a huge problem, especially when they find their food of choice.  Fortunately, if you catch it early enough, there is a good solution.  Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a bacteria that is a biological pesticide for controlling caterpillars.  Because B. thuringiensis is a bacteria and has little or no effect on humans, animals and beneficial insects, it is considered environmentally-friendly.  Bt is probably the active ingredient in all products that are labelled to control caterpillars.  These products are usually a liquid spray applied to plants, which then needs to be ingested by the caterpillars to be effective.

Personally, I have just decided to let the caterpillars have the broccoli this time.  It was just a few plants, but next time I will be prepared.  In the meantime, I will remain vigilant for signs of the next attack. 

Fall Gardening

The weather right now isn't very convincing, but it is time for fall gardening - maybe even late.  Last week when I added the gardening calendar to the site, I realized that I was a little behind.  Still, I decided to plant everything I could.  There's still time for cool-season crops like broccoli, lettuce and radishes, but time is running out (or has run out) on late summer crops like beans and squash.  That's what I've been thinking about this weekend.

There's a feed store near where I've been attending a gardening class the past several Tuesdays - one time I bought chicken feed, another time hay.  I noticed that they had a large variety of seeds for sale.  Once I made the gardening calendar, I made plans to buy seeds for everything that I need to plant in the coming weeks, as well as what I should have planted already.  I bought a leaf lettuce, two types of radishes, two types of summer squash and two types of winter squash, and broccoli plants to transplant in the garden.
I put the broccoli in the other day and planted a few winter squash seeds, but saved the rest of my work until now.  I was looking up some of the seeds online last night to see if there was anything special I needed to know.  Mostly, I was curious about how long it would take them to reach maturity and whether the squash was a bush- or vine-type.  The "days to maturity" is important to know for the warm-seasons vegetables like beans and squash, because we have only a limited number of days until a frost.  Also, I planned to grow the squash on a trellis, so I wanted to know which ones would vine and which ones would bush.

The butternut squash I bought is 90-100 days, which means it's too late in the year to plant it.  Our first frost date is about November 20th, which gives me less than 90 days.  The other winter squash I bought is an acorn squash.  Its listed around 70-80 days, but it's a bush-type, which is not what I want for trellising.

I think I'm going to skip the squash this late in the season, go with the cool season crops - lettuce, radish and broccoli - and plant some beans, which, if they don't give me any pods, I can still turn them under, giving me a little nitrogen for my next planting.

Broccoli Flowers

Once again I didn't harvest the broccoli soon enough.  We really must not want to eat it around our house.  This seems to happen every year.  I think I ought to just stop planting it and grow something we will eat.

I really just wanted a reason to post these photos today.

Spring Cleanup

I know it's not spring yet, but I feel like it motivates me to think like that, when I have pre-spring chores to do.  I needed to get out in the yard and clean up some dying plants from the dose of winter that we've been having.  I planned to tweak Ella's green roof project, pull up the onions and broccoli that were damaged recently, and start planning for chickens - I don't know when that will be, but I can plan, right?

Fixing the green roof project didn't take too long, and I pulled up the onions and some of the weeds and got bored - I've had a long week and it was a little colder than I wanted.  When I moved to the beds with the cold-damaged broccoli, I was surprised to find very nice heads on these plants, despite the dying foliage all around.  I pulled some weeds from the beds and decided we're going to have to eat some broccoli this week.

We've been talking about getting chickens for a while now.  We(I) finally got a dose of what it would be like to have chickens when neighbors went out of town for Xmas and asked us to take care of theirs.  They have five hens, two of which are laying.  I've read a lot about chickens, so I think I know how all of this works, in theory - reality is a different thing.  I had plans to build the perfect coop and henhouse with nesting boxes, etc, but the chickens hardly used the henhouse, didn't like being cooped up - they liked being free range in the yard, and they laid their eggs next to the A/C unit.  It was an eye-opening experience - now I just have to take in all I have learned when working out plans for chickens in our yard.

After the Freeze

The new year is a time for starting over.  In some ways I mean that literally around our house.  I can't say I was taken by surprise by the cold weather that hit us in early December, but I was surprised how long and how cold it was.  I could say that I was preoccupied with Ella's green roof science fair project - which I was - but the fact is, I would have been unprepared even if I hadn't been doing something else.

The extended cold really did a number on all of our winter vegetables - broccoli, onions, lettuce.  I've pretty much given up on them - I just haven't pulled them out of the ground nad thrown them into the composter yet.

I also had tender and somewhat hardy houseplants outside - only a few might live when warm weather comes around again.  Other plants I'll hold onto and see what happens to them as well.  So, I am making a sort of fresh start.  I need to get out in the garden and pull up the old vegetables and I think I'm just going to plant lettuce and spinach - it'll be more low maintenance and I can easily cover it when I have to - if I remember.

The Winter Vegetable Garden

I've been pondering the winter vegetable garden recently - rethinking it. I planted two beds of broccoli, two beds of onions, and a bed of greens - lettuce and spinach. We rarely eat broccoli - especially from the garden, I haven't successfully grown a really good onion, and our greens are nonexistent - the spinach never came up and something must have eaten our lettuce - I don't think it just died.

I need to rethink our fall planting more - I don't want to give up on onions, but I may limit myself to a half of a bed, and only one type of onion - yellow granex hybrid, also know as a Vidalia. I'll stick with the broccoli, though I'll try to grow more from seed. Robin says she's trying to sneak more vegetables into meals. I think my focus during the winter ought to be on greens. We will get the most out of them - they're usually easy to grow, cheap, replenish-able and I really enjoyed all the salads I ate last spring.

Planting Time

I just took a couple of days to organize my vegetable seeds/plants and to decide what I'm planting and where. I've narrowed my first planting down to white and yellow onion sets, broccoli plants and carrots, lettuce and spinach seeds.

Also I have three kinds of onion seeds, more lettuce and spinach seeds and broccoli seeds. I plan to use the lettuce and spinach in a succession planting. I'll probably start the broccoli in seed flats and move them to the garden when I have room. I've been wanting to try to grow onions from seed - fall is the best time to do that, but I don't have a lot more room. I'll try to squeeze them in with the carrots if I don't have too many.

If nothing interferes with my plans, I should be planting everything this weekend.

Fall Gardening

Fall sneaked up on me this year. Back in August the newspaper ran an article about it that made me feel like I was behind in my planting. I could have planted some things, but it seemed really too hot for lettuce, spinach, etc. Onions wouldn't be planted until October, so I really had time to wait and see what the weather did. Strangely fall happened almost at the same time as October - which means I need to get planting.

I called a few feed stores last week, looking for onion sets and I found them. I only know of around five, but after a couple of years of buying potatoes and onions, there seem to be only two reliable ones: Dorchester Feed and Supply and Red Top Feed and Tackle Shop. There is more info on these stores here.

I had today off and planned to go to one of them to get onions and whatever else they might have. I thought I would check with my neighbor, Mr. Hiers - he was looking for collard greens and last year I gave him onion sets, because he couldn't find any. I told him I where I was going and volunteered to buy him what he needed.

I ended up buying Mr. Hiers two pounds of yellow onion sets and five 9-packs of collars greens. I bought a 9-pack of broccoli and a pound each of yellow and white onion sets for myself. I don't think I'll plant all of the onions, so I've offered some to a couple of friends who are getting serious into gardening. I've had mixed results with onions, so let's hope I fair better this year.

After I took Mr. Hiers what I bought him, I began preparing my garden. I pulled weeds and worked some compost into the beds and I sat down and started planning what and where to plant. I've got onion sets and onion seeds, broccoli plants and broccoli seeds and lettuce, spinach and carrot seeds. The broccoli plants and onion sets I have to plant this fall. If I plant the onion, carrot and broccoli seeds I should plant them this fall. I have two packs each of lettuce and spinach seeds, so I will plant one now and one later, so I will have salads all winter and spring.

I think I have room for most of this - I do have two many onion seeds, though - three different varieties. I'll at least try growing one kind just to get some experience at this. I'll let you know soon what I end up planting.

New Year, New Raised Bed

The past couple of weeks, I've felt very unmotivated to work in the yard. There hasn't been much sun left when I got home from work, and the temperature was starting to drop. When I have been home early, I just haven't felt like going back outside. It's rained some too - enough to make it no fun to work in the mud.

I saw no end in sight, with Ella starting school on Monday - so I had to give myself a big push and tell myself that it was my last best chance to get stuff done. It must have worked, because I got another raised bed almost ready to plant in two afternoons.

Wednesday afternoon, I swung by Lowe's near work and picked up ten cinder blocks. I wasn't sure how many I needed, but they're heavy and I didn't want to load down the car too much. When I got home I discovered I only needed only five more, so I immediately ran to Lowe's near home before traffic got bad. When I got back I laid them out and leveled them. Now they were ready for the compost.

Even though I'm off on New Year's Day, my only chance to get compost from the county landfill was after work on Thursday. I knew it might rain, but as long as it wasn't raining more than a light drizzle, I would still go. When I left work the rain was holding off, so I decided to go. I put plastic down in the back of our hatchback and I was off. When you buy compost by the ton at the landfill, they weigh your vehicle entering and leaving and you pay $10 a ton for the difference. I had been there in the rain before and it wasn't that bad, but today was just extremely muddy. I was having to scoop right on the surface of the pile to get the fluffiest and driest stuff. The deeper I dug, the wetter and more compact it was. It was a slow process - I also suspected that it would weigh more and I'd be paying a little extra because of it.

I loaded the car as full as I dared and then left to be weighed. 520 pounds of compost cost me a whopping $2.60. The landfill and the recycling center sell the same compost for $2 per bag - the bags probably weigh 40 pounds. Going to the landfill may be a little more effort, but it's well worth the price difference.

Once I got home, I backed the car as close to the garden as possible and shoveled it into a wheelbarrow and dumped it into the new raised bed, repeating that process four or five times. So, I'm nearly ready to plant in the new bed - I thought I would plant more lettuce or spinach, but I realized I have only a month before I will need to plant more onions and potatoes, so that bed may sit fallow until February. Our broccoli is close to being over done, so I may pull that out and plant spinach there - we'll see. I've got places to put possibly five more raised beds. As I'm thinking about the warm-season vegetables I want to plant, I may need all of those. I've posted a diagram of my raised beds here.

More Fall Vegetable Gardening

Fall is definitely in the air. We've had some unexpected cold nights in the past week. The first morning I worried about my plants - especially the tender houseplants that have been outside since the Spring, and the plant swap stuff that are still sitting in the driveway. We've had more cool nights - mid to high forties - and everything have been fine, though it has gotten me to think about what I plant to do with these plants during the winter. I even dreamed that the temperature dropped to 20º and all my plants died!

I've collected numerous houseplants and tender succulents since the Spring, and the reckoning is coming soon. Most of these I picked up off the street, their owners having abandoned them, so I wouldn't be losing out financially, but I'd hate to see these plants that I "rescued" die. Last year I had some metal shelves that I wrapped in clear plastic that I bought at Dollar Tree. It was quite thin, but it was large enough to double up, and when it got too cold, like last winter, I threw some old quilts over it at night. I ended up losing a lot of succulents I was propagating for the Spring Plant Swap. This year I'd like to get some thick plastic sheeting and line the garden storage/greenhouse area and possibly wrap shelves again.

Yet another garden injury!

Despite having sliced my toe pretty good Tuesday morning - first my hand, now my foot - I managed to get a lot done around the yard on Wednesday. Robin said she was planning to do laundry on Tuesday and I wanted her to wash my garden gloves - I started wearing gloves since my last accident. I had replied to a post on Craigslist last week - someone wanting help in their yard in exchange for plants. I couldn't pass that up - free plants and something to blog about. So, while I was out in the yard around six in the morning looking for my gloves, I stepped on something that sliced down the side of my big toe. I cleaned it and put a band-aid on it and called work. I really thought I would be fine in a couple of days.

Of course I had to cancel my plans to work in someone else's yard for plants. After getting a good look at her list of plants, it wasn't that disappointing to miss out. Several of the plants I already had - hidden ginger, taro, canna. She had a few varieties of canna that I wanted for a bed I might make over the winter.

I had Wednesday off and I really didn't go back to the doctor - "you again?" I limped around on Tuesday, but after walking the dogs in the evening, it really hurt. We thought we might go to the doctor on Wednesday, but my toe felt pretty good in the morning. Robin was insistent that I be sure I could go to work on Thursday. She suggested I walk around the block and see how I feel. If it hurt after that, then we would go to the doctor, but it felt pretty good.

I planned to try to work in the yard. I had a long list so I started with the easiest stuff and thought I would see how I felt. I ended up doing almost everything on my list. We've got a few stumps that keep sprouting and I keep cutting them back. I've tried various things - salt, vinegar, etc - to kill them but but nothing has worked. The next thing I'm going to try is smothering them with black trash bags - no light and no water will kill them hopefully. We've got oaks and maples in our azalea hedges that I've been meaning to do that to.

I finished planting all the vegetables for the Fall. I planted (more) onions and lettuce in the raised bed and broccoli and garlic in one of the beds out front. I seemed to do ok this past Spring with broccoli, but there just wasn't enough - and the last of it bolted when we were out of town. (Doesn't that sound like it ran away while we were gone?) I have 18 plants this time, so we'll see how much we actually get.

I had a little trouble with onions in the Spring. The sets were planted all the in the ground, meaning the bulbs were completely covered, and not in a raised bed. We had a few heavy rains in the Spring and some of the onions didn't like all that wet clay soil. Last Summer I sa my neighbor, Mr. Hiers, had his onions planted almost right on top of the soil, so the only thing in the ground were the roots. It looked like he had a pretty good crop. I'm trying it his way this time. I'm sure it will be an improvement over last time, especially in the raised bed.

The last thing I planted was garlic. I've never grown it before, but I thought I would give it a try. I bought three garlic bulbs and peeled them and broke off the cloves. They tell you to plant only the biggest ones, but I figured I would plant all of them and see what happens. I have the 10-12 larger cloves in one area out front and then I put the rest of them behind them. probably 15-20 more. They won't be ready to harvest until summer so it's really an investment of time and space. Robin's excited as well. She's never cooked with garlic cloves before, so we'll both be learning something new.

I have one more thing to mention - I got a free pineapple plant off craigslist today. It was posted a few days ago, but it was crazy trying to get up with this person to actually get it. I finally had to go to her house today and get it. She's been trying to give one to someone else in my neighborhood, so I volunteered to hold it for this guy to pick up at our house. We'll see if he actually comes to get it. I might end up with two.

Fall Vegetable Garden

I finally started planting my fall vegetable garden. I went a long time without having anything in the ground, so I'm trying to catch up. My raised bed is finished for the most part and full of compost. This past week I bought onion sets - yellow and white - and some broccoli plants. I looked for lettuce plants, but the ones I saw were real leggy. I'll try again this weekend, and I'll also look for lettuce seeds and spinach seeds.

The feed store where I bought the onions, sold them either by the pound or half pound. With a lot of things, a pound doesn't sound like very much to me, but when it comes to onion sets, it is. I think I planted close to fifty onions so far and I haven't even put a dent in them. I looked into storing them until spring, but it seems like a lot of work and they're very cheap.

I wanted to plant something in the holes of the concrete blocks as an experiment. Since I don't know what will happen, I decided to plant onions - since I have so many of them - and hope for the best. I'll let you know how it goes.

When I got compost for the raised bed a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and filled almost the whole bed. After reading about planting in compost, the consensus is that it is best as an ammendment to the soil. So, before I planted the raised bed, I went around the yard, digging holes, putting that soil in the garden, and putting compost in those holes. I've done that with half the bed, where I planted broccoli, and in the block holes, where I planted white onions. If I can clean out most of the dollar weed in my other beds, I'll be doing the same thing with the other half of the bed.

I feel like I don't have nearly enough room in this bed for everything I'd like to plant. I'm probably going to plant lettuce, spinach and garlic in any space I can out in the flower bed. Wish me luck.

Broccoli

It's always interesting when you discover how little you know about plants, or when a plant does something totally unexpected, but after it happens, it makes complete sense. This is the first time I've grown broccoli, so I've been watching it, wondering when it's time to harvest. Everything I read said to do it while the heads were compact, firm, etc. (But no book prepared me for what I saw when I returned.) That's what they were when we went away for a few days last week, but when we gat back, they were on their way to something completely new to me.

Soon after we got home, I took a walk through the yard, checking on plants, fish, etc. I noticed a couple of broccoli heads were loosening up and I figured I missed my window for harvesting those plants. It wasn't until the next morning that I noticed the flowers. Did you know that each little, tiny bud in a head of broccoli will flower? I had no idea! Actually, it makes perfect sense, but I never considered it.

So, I won't be getting as much broccoli from the garden as I planned, but it was definitely a learning experience. I'll be planting broccoli again this fall and I'll plan to harvest sooner to avoid the flowers. My wife and I were talking about how little of it we got from all of our plants this spring. I think when we plant in the fall, we'll plant lots more, spreading some of it around in the landscape.

Seed Starting

I thought I would get a head start this year if I grew my own vegetables and flowers from seed. Boy, was I wrong! I don't think I anticipated how early I should have been starting various seeds. I started seeds in January and February for cool season crops like lettuce, broccoli, spinach, cauliflower and onions. They took their time germinating - some didn't at all. (I know that some of them were last year's seeds, but still.)

I thought I was making progress, but I didn't have anything to compare it to...until I went to Lowes. Nothing will make you less inclined to grow from seed than visiting Lowes in mid February. I am exaggerating...a little. I did buy a few things there, but I was determined to see this growing from seed thing through. I bought onion sets - it seems the seeds I started were the wrong kind for my area. (More on onions another time) I bought heading lettuce - it was so much larger than what I had grown up to that point. I also bought broccoli - my seeds hadn't germinated. I will be buying tomatoes as well - you get the picture.

My successes? I consider the sweet corn I transplanted to the garden Wednesday a success. Ditto on the sunflower seedlings I put in the front yard at the same time. Also I have a fair amount of Black Eyed Susans and Purple Coneflowers and a few Hibiscuses that I will be transplanting soon.

On a related note, last year my mother-in-law gave me a grow-your-own-kitchen-herbs kit that she bought at Goodwill. I had no expectations of getting any plants out of it, not knowing how old it was. So I wasn't surprised when nothing happened. She gave me another one this year, maybe for Xmas, and I waited until a week or two ago to start the seeds. To my surprise, most of the seeds germinated - Basil, Parsley and Corriander, but not the Thyme. I'll keep you posted on those.