Category Archives: insects in the garden

Spring 2024

May 1, 2024: Premier voyage of the greenhouse! Propagation has been in full swing since January 2024. One little setback delayed my peppers for a month, however I am no longer frantic as I have a greenhouse to extend the season as long as necessary! The crops shown above are my Asclepius groups “Hello Yellow” and Orange tuberosa and the middle Common Milkweed. happy with the progress so far.

Managing the Temperature in the Greenhouse is going to be the challenge this season. I prefer my veggies to be full grown before they are “cooked” with high temps! The Palma Twin greenhouse fan with thermostat has kept a steady heat all winter long allowing my hydrangeas, yucca, kale and parsley to successfully survive. Newly propagated plants have been put in the greenhouse as soon as they showed they were sturdy enough to stand temperature shifts and real sunlight rather than grow lights

Red bush beans are already producing! So far I am very pleased with the color and sturdiness of the plants. I have been supplementing with fish fertilizer, something I have finally understood, that its “OK” to use fertilizer in potted plants. Plants in pots are dependent on us for nutrition, it was something that I was reluctant to try, but now I understand that there just isn’t the same soil dynamic as there is when you have worms and other organisims crawling around.

Cucumbers are doing well. For the past few years I have not been happy with the harvest, we will see how I can change this in 2024. I may just leave some in the greenhouse to compare how they thrive in there vs an outside plot. Every year is a new adventure.

This year we pruned the fruit trees again. Last year they shot up and I would say doubled in size! We need to keep them manageable and on the small side, after all they are dwarf varieties and should not be allowed to get too large. We sprayed horticultural spray application #1 and will continue following sprays to keep the fruit healthy. Last year was very successful as there were no bugs. The apples had spots on their skin due to the leaf-heavy centers, now we know that air circulation is key.

Nature never fails to surprise. After pruning the trees, I had used some heavier branches to support the side of my huglekulture bed. I have notice that it started to grow! Totally unexpected, and not so sure that it is really going to grow, but I am happy to see is sprouting nonetheless !

More to come…

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Slowly inching outside

The weather this weekend has been incredible. Sunny and in the 60’s make it a perfect day to start cleanup and startup of Garden 2023. Pulled out a couple of good reference books (Toulouse took a bite out of my Square foot Gardening book when he was a puppy)

So I have implemented a few tried and true concepts so far in 2023 garden plan. I would like to get more out of each garden bed so I am going to square-foot with companion planting and see how this works in addition to succession

Still have the rest of the seedlings to put in, and technically Mothers day is the frost free date, I am taking my chances putting these in as it is, so that’s as far as I will go today.

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Preparing for Fall

August 25, 2018

The weather has finally been cooperative! Beautiful 77degree day, clear sky, great day to weed the garden and start preparing for the latter half of the summer. I repotted the Lemon tree, and I pulled my Rosemary and Sage and put them in pots to bring inside for the winter. I do hope they survive!

I harvested the carrots and the beets from my indoor greenhouse. Pretty disappointing overall! IMG_8580I have heard of MicroGreens, but I have produced Micro Carrots! Actually, they weren’t all this size, IMG_8578but they were tiny, smaller than “baby carrots”. My beets had NO beets at all! just greens…which were pretty tasty, but, like the carrots a disappointment.

My project for the greenhouse is: 1) to figure out why the root vegetables were such a failure. 2) to figure out why things take so long to mature when I have heat, light, and humidity.  The soil is dense, maybe it should be lighter? more vermiculite?

Bees/waspsIMG_8572/ and other flying things have started to populate the Mason bee house. Happy to see life in it since I moved it from a different part of the garden. Bees have been more prevalent in the garden later in the season, although my roses did not bloom quite the way they did last season, there was a lot of activity.

So there still is much to do, weeding, mulching and marking the locations of plants so next spring there is less mystery is what is coming up.

 

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Weekend of Gardening

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August 12, 2018

With all the rain we have had this past week, the bad news is the crabgrass took over. The good news is today, with all the rain we have had this past week, weeding was very productive! The ground was soft, the tools worked just right, and buckets of crabgrass was added to my forest floor! We mulched the outline of the newly expanded areas I was able to plant a few more perrenials in between rain drops.IMG_8559

What I added: to the front garden I planted two Minuet Mountain Laurels and to the “crabapple cascade” area in the back I added two sweetfern (Comptonia Peregrina) three cardinal plants, and a “turtlehead” plant. My trusty companion Toulouse is always around when I garden, he is always sniffing his way through the underbrush to check out what has been visiting in the night.

Pumpkins are taking over their alloted patch. Seems like miles of vine and lots of flowers…I think there are a few pumpkins coming in, but they are well hidden, as are the summer squash. The Cherry tomatoes are coming in fast and furiously. Every time I go out to the garden I can easily harvest 50-75 cherry IMG_8548tomatoes.  I have given away many, and I have already dehydrated my first batch! The tomatoes in the raised beds are doing just OK. Most of the leaves have already died back, and the tomatoes are starting to ripen. This particular batch I raised from seed, the others that were Nursery purchased have been splitting due to too much water, so we have been bringing them in sooner before they start splitting, to ripen off the vine.

We also picked our first 4 peaches. They were a bit deformed, and kinda buggy, but there was enough good area left to actually eat! it is puzzling to me why the season was so delayed. Peach season is usually June, maybe in our zone peaches ripen in August. A few more on the tree ripening. I would consider that a successful harvest for the first year in the ground! Apples….meh those are another story all together, but next year we can spray organic stuff on them so we may have a better chance at getting fruit that matures.

We would like to get out in the Kayacks, but the weather is too unpredictable. Unlike hiking where a little bit of rain is not an issue, I do not want to find myself on a lake, in the rain. Water from the top, water underneath doesn’t make me a happy paddler.

 

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Birthday Butterfly

July 27th, 2018

Great shot of a female Tiger Swallowtail that landed on my Butterfly plant

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New Toy

Having some Naturalist fun with my Birthday present. Now the big decision will be where to keep the camera when I am gardening.

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Oh Hey! I’m​ looking at you, you’re​ looking at me!

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Update on Caterpillar​

Just an update from my previous post. My Swallowtail caterpillar has grown at an amazing rate, it looks pretty different from the last post (middle picture). I am hoping I will be able to see it mature. right now it is still pretty unnoticeable, but when it gets to full size It may get picked off by birds

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Nature in my garden

June 25th, 2018: Life in the garden

Sadly this year, the buzz of bees in my garden has just not been there. I did have the opportunity to shoot mama (or daddy?) wren (?) bringing home a lacewing dinner. If you look closely you can see clear down that little baby’s throat!

I also found an infestation of small caterpillars on my dill and parsley. Doing a bit of image research I found out this will mature to a black swallowtail butterfly (pictured above). It amazes me that I have not seen any butterflies of this type this year, yet these little caterpillars are all over the place! I can’t even see any eggs, but like magic, they show up almost overnight.

I am hoping that as the season progresses the grand-central like activity at my rose garden will build, right now though, it very sad. I have only seen a few bumble bees around the clover and the bee balm

 

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