willsfamilyacres

>Squash Vine Borers

May 20, 2009 by Laura

I’ve been enjoying my squash bounty knowing that it would eventually come to an end. The squash vine borers took out my pumpkin plants last year and I was waiting for their arrival this year. This morning I did my walk through before work and found one plant looking extremely pathetic. All of the leaves were drooping. Once I thought about it I realized that the leaves were a little droopy yesterday but I didn’t think anything of it. I should have known. Well anyway … it was too late for that plant. I ripped it out and started inspecting the others. Turns out I had a serious infestation on my hands. I found these terrible little creatures in all but one of my plants. I spent two hours digging them out. I lost two plants this morning and it looks like another three won’t make it. We’ll just have to wait and see about the rest. I hope I got all of them, but I’m not sure. By then end of my major surgery I was getting pretty good at determining exactly where the SVBs were, which hopefully did less damage to the plants.

Squash Plant completely eaten through

An early catch. Here’s what to look for. The yellowish substance is called frass. You can’t always see it, since it is often underneath the plant, but you’ll always be able to feel the gooey glob where the SVB entered the plant. The plant feels dry aside from this.

Carnage

More carnage

Posted in pests, squash-vine borer | 1 Comment »

>May Bloom Day – a day late

May 16, 2009 by Laura

I took pictures yesterday evening, but didn’t have a chance to post them last night. Here’s what’s blooming in my garden…

Cantaloupe

Bluebonnets – round two. I was sure these were done for the year.

Butter Bean Blossom

Cilantro

Zinnias. These are two of the seven colors I have growing.

Nasturtium

Knock-Out Rose

Mums

Columbine

“Fruit Cocktail” Shrimp Plant

Tangerine Abutilon

Coreopsis w/ Plumbago

More Nasturtium

Also blooming…

texas yellow star

rock rose

blackfoot daisy

marigolds

penta

purple heart

four o’clock

all sorts of fruits and veggies

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>The Search for Batface, The Dangers of Squash Blossoms, Mysterious Seedlings

May 11, 2009 by Laura

Not much gardening occurred this weekend, but that doesn’t translate to nothing to report in the garden…

Ever since the Grow Green book came out this year I’ve been pining after a batface cuphea. I’ve looked all over the place with no luck. I talked to someone who bought one at the Zilker Garden Festival, but I didn’t make it this year. Then last week I talked to a friend of mine, a casual gardener, who had recently planted three batface cupheas. That is just not fair! She shared with me that they had several at the Red Barn in North Austin. I drove up Friday during my lunch break and was able to find some. They aren’t flowering yet, but I was told they are fast growers. Now I just have to figure out where to plant them.

We had guests over for dinner on Saturday night and I decided to make goat cheese stuffed squash blossoms. I grabbed several from the garden Saturday morning, but as I started to put them together I realized that I could use a few more. As I started opening the newly gathered blossoms one of them was buzzing. I peaked and saw a bee inside. I immediately moved towards the door to throw the squash blossom outside, but before I could, the bee escaped. I screamed, threw the blossom, and yelled to my husband that there was a bee in the house. He seemed less concerned than I was. Well after I had a chance to collect myself I went for the blossom, since you don’t want to waste a perfectly good squash blossom. As I picked it up, a bee flew out. I screamed and threw it again. I was then very confused, I could have sworn I saw the bee fly out. Turns out there were 2 bees in that squash blossom. Luckily they flew to the sunroom and were buzzing around the windows. After about 10 minutes of coaxing I swas able to return those bees to the outside. Maybe that’s why they say to gather the blossoms in the morning.

On a side note, I also made pesto with the garden basil and cooked up some zucchini and yellow squash. Yum!

On to the mysterious sprouts… For the past several weeks I’ve seen what I swear are squash and tomatoes seedlings. I could be wrong about the tomatoes, but the squash family is pretty distinct. I couldn’t figure out how these were getting everywhere, especially in the back yard. Finally I figured out that I had used homemade compost in the recent plantings. The compost must not have been hot enough to kill the seeds, so last seasons veggies were sprouting in the garden. I guess this is why you’re supposed to avoid weeds in the compost pile. A few squash plants are much easier to deal with than milkweed.

Posted in seedlings | 4 Comments »

>Garden Update – New Toy

May 4, 2009 by Laura

I had a very busy garden weekend. I started out Saturday morning by digging out a beds for the Lithonia seeds and moon flowers I got at the blogging get-together (thanks Diane from Sharing Nature’s Garden). It seems like such a huge area when you are digging, but once you’re done it’s very underwhelming.

I also dug out grass and planted a bed in the back yard. I was at The Natural Gardener friday afternoon (snuck out of work for a few minutes) looking for another tomato cage. I got the tomato cage, but also grabbed two shrimp plants and a tangerine abuliton. The shrimp plants are called “fruit cocktail” and are a yellowish-green and red. They were too cool to resist.

“Fruit Cocktail” Shrimp Plant

Tangerine Abutilon

Between garden chores, I decided to map the sun. I know my back yard is shaded, but didn’t really know how much. Turns out at about 1:30 in the afternoon there is no shade to be found, the entire yard is in complete sun. I had no idea. I plan on doing this again around the summer solstice.

My weekend finished off with a trip to Costco, where I found a new garden cart. I’ve been wanting one for a while and this one was just perfect. It carries 1200 lbs, converts to a flat bed cart and has a dumping feature. It also comes with a thick plastic insert, so you can carry loose dirt. My husband had to work last night, so I put it together myself 🙂

I spent way too much time this weekend admiring my handiwork. The vegetable garden is really taking off, and it makes me so proud, I just can’t help but stare.

Okra and Swiss Chard

Scale of Squash Leaves

Yellow Squash and Zucchini

Sun Gold Tomatoes

Roma Tomatoes

First Green Beans

Green Bean Blossom. I just love the delicate pink flower.

Swallowtail Caterpillar. We affectionately refer to them as “bird poo” caterpillars. I caught this one mid chomp.

First okra. I took this picture for scale of the okra versus a giant zucchini that I picked a day too late.

Posted in Status | 2 Comments »

>Zucchini Everywhere!

April 25, 2009 by Laura

I’ve heard that zucchini grows like crazy, but I really had no idea. I don’t think you can understand until you witness it yourself. I’ve been checking the squash plants every morning and everything looks fine, then I check again in the evening and the each zucchini is twice the size and suddenly there are huge ones that I swear weren’t there that morning. Needless to say, our friends should be well stocked with zucchini this year.

The rest of the garden is also doing well. The peppers have finally taken off. I really think it was just to cold for them. I don’t have peppers yet, but the plants have doubled in size this last week and I can see the makings of blooms.

The first tomatoes appeared this week as well, sun gold variety. The rest of the tomato plants all have blooms, so things are moving along nicely.

I spent some time looking through the garden and found aphids on many of the pepper leaves. The ants had already beat me to them and were chomping away. I was able to smash and brush away the rest of them. Hopefully, this doesn’t turn into a bigger problem. I’m glad I spotted them early.

I also replanted zinnias. I planted them several weeks ago, but that late cold spell took them out. The new ones are much prettier anyway.