We have squash bugs.  I didn’t even know there were squash bugs until yesterday, and I hate them.  A bunch of my squash plants are having the same problem – the leaves are yellowing and dying, there’s some black spots on the undersides of the leaves, and often, the flowers will die and fall off before the vegetable starts growing:

Somtimes we’ll get a squash that never gets big, and starts rotting on the vine:

I have a good handful of healthy looking squash that have not grown any bigger than a fat pinky finger in 2 weeks:

and I’m exasperated.

We. Love. Squash.

And this year we’ll be lucky to get 3, I’m thinking.

My friend told me about a product I can buy to dust on the leaves of the young plants.  Next year.  These are goners.

My other pests:

Grasshoppers.

they are big, they are small, and they are GIANT.  They are well fed on my garden, sadly, and most of my plants are riddled with holes.  The news reported recently that while the state is having the grasshopper problem everywhere, my town is the worst.

At this point, I’m going to be lucky to get anything!

We’ve already harvested 1 zucchini, a handful of smallish tomatoes, a few beets and a couple carrots.

I noticed this afternoon that a lot of my tomato plants have black spots on the leaves.  After looking at the possible causes, I’m pretty sure it’s blight.  Usually late season blight sets in when the weather is too cool and wet.  Unfortunately we’ve had an extremely wet, cool June.  And that’s not good for my poor tomatoes.  I’ll take off the affected leaves tomorrow, and it’s going to be ugly out there.  I’m glad we found it before we leave for 2 weeks (vacations come at the wrong time for gardeners!), but still, what a pain.

I really want to do this next year!

Directions and Info

The beans I planted about 4 weeks ago have failed miserably.  Out of two full packs of beans, I have maybe 10 sprouts, and some of those have been eaten by bugs and snails.  I was telling my neighbor how frustrated I was, especially because beans, in my mind, are like zucchini – they just grow, no matter what.  She told me about garden inoculent:

It’s supposed to give bean and pea seeds a boost, especially when they’re planted in dirt that hasn’t had vegetables grown in it before.  I soaked the new package of bean seeds overnight, and am about to dust them in this powder and plant them outside.  Then we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that this round goes better than the last.

We are having big time snail problems.  It has not been like this our other 2 years gardening in Utah, and it’s bad. I’m wondering if every snail in northern Utah decided to come to our yard.  In under one week, they have killed several plants and working on several others.  Almost everything has at least a bite out of it.  We used snail killer along the outside of the boxes earlier this week, but two mornings since, I have found a group of snails inside the boxes.  My dad sent me two links about killing and managing snails.

from Weekend Gardener.com

from UC Davis

I think I want to go price copper at Lowe’s today, but since we have 4 boxes that are each 32 sq ft, it might get pricey.  The articles describe several traps, and ways to try to get them out of the garden, but since we have so many, and the bait isn’t even working, I might be desperate enough to shell out the money for copper.

We planted one of our 16X2 foot beds today.

what’s in the bed

1 – Supersweet 100
2 – Slicing Cuke
3 – Beefmaster Tomato
4 – Straightneck Squash
5 – Golden Boy tomato
6 – Grape tomato
7 – Ace 55VF Tomato
8 – Juilet Tomato
9 – Cilantro
10 – Zucchini
A – Purple Beans (Sequoia?)
B – Golden Wax Beans
C – Bush Garden Gold Mine Beans
D – Detroit Dark Red Beet
E – Red Cloud Beet

The chickens are growing, and now enjoying their outdoor home.  It looks like we might have a rooster.  He won’t be long for this world.

Here is a map of what we planted in Box 1 this week

.

Heavy on the tomatoes, and that’s not all the tomatoes we’ve got going!  I’m wondering if all those peppers really need their own box; I don’t think any of our plants have gotten that large. This year will be the test and next year we might put them closer.  I can not find a cilantro plant to save my life, I’ve been to 4 stores.  I’m going to a few more this weekend before I admit defeat.  The other 2 squares are reserved for herbs.  The herb selection at every store I’ve been to has been really bad this year.

(EDIT: the last 2 squares I just planted with carrots.  I only had enough seeds for 6 holes of “Little Fingers” and the rest of the squares are “Short-n-Sweet”, which grow to 4″.  Perfect for that bed – should have thought of it this morning.)

This is what the box looks like right now.  When I plant, it’s always hard for me to imagine the plants full grown.

Below is garden box 2

We planted tons of peas this year – we love them fresh and they freeze well.  A closer shot of the non-pea half:

The broccoli and cauliflower were supposed to have their own square, but I didn’t think they’d need it.  Lesson learned.  The lettuce, and definately spinach, can get planted closer next year.  We’ve been eating a ton of it and it just keeps growing.  Fantastic.

We’ve got a few more broc/cauli plants in box 3.

This weekend we’ll get the beans, carrots, squash, melon and pumpkins planted, and then we should be good for a little while.

We are so behind on our spring garden.  We got back from California the 1st week of April and had Big Sick in the house for two weeks, followed by a full week of some fun family that cam in from out of town.  Needless to say, I never got our summer seeds planted, and, because we had Big Snow last week, on April 16th, our spring veggies are still not in the ground.  Outside, but not in the boxes.  This week we are set to have fabulous weather, so tomorrow I’ll be in the garden, planting the peas (that should have been in the ground 3-4 weeks ago, but can still be planted here until mid-May), and all our winter seedlings.  I’m hoping to get the tomato and summer seedlings going tomorrow – again, 3-4 weeks later than I would like.  Better late than never, I hope.  Since I’m starting the seedlings so late, I might be dealing with dozens of pounds of green tomatoes again this fall.

We got 6 new baby chicks Friday.  This is our 2nd go-round with chickens, and I’m thrilled.  Nothing compares to the taste and color of fresh eggs, and there is just something so relaxing about watching the birds outside.  We love our hens, and I’m excited for this new batch of “ladies”.

This next part of our garden has me the most nervous of all.  This is the point I killed everything last year.  The seedlings were much, much smaller then, so I’m hoping that the extra size will help them this year.

We had the grow light in the basement, but brought it upstairs to make it easier for our friend who plant-sat while we were in California.

They’re looking pretty good, aren’t they?

I waited too long, I think, to replant a lot of the seedlings.  They’ve taken well to their new cups now, but I probably should have moved most of them sooner.  I ended up repotting most of them, with the boys “help” in a mad rush the night before we left.

Starting tomorrow, the plants are going to get their first taste of real sun.  It’s been so cold here and we had a lot of snow again today, so I won’t have them out for long, and in a pretty sheltered place.  Every few days I’ll leave them out a little longer.  Hopefully they’ll be ready to go in the garden boxes in the next 2 weeks.

Garden 2009 has begun!

We’ve tried starting seedlings indoors just twice since moving here and both times killed them while trying to harden them off.  Here goes the next try.  We planted 2 kinds of spinach, 2 kinds of lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower.