scaredy cat farmer returns

I am back after a two week vacation in AZ.  Sorry to disappear with out warning, but it seemed wrong to announce I was abandoning my home on the web. 

Predictably I returned to a bunch of bolted produce.

I have managed to clean out the beds and am hoping to get some winter starts in this weekend. 

who stole the apples?

I found two of my makeshift applesox in the grass this week -- and the apples were gone.  I have lost half my crop.  I am thinking whoever left these tracks on the kids' picnic table is the answer....

Could it be a racoon?  If it is, I am sure this garden predator won't have a chance of taking him out.

self-watering containers

Today I made self-watering containers, from scratch.  I put them out on my deck next to my EarthBox Ready-to-Grow kit -- which I put together at the start of June (blame the cool weather -- we still haven't reached 80 -- and my fear of fertilizer for the limited growth of my plants.)

If you look online, you will find a lot of advice on how to make self-watering containers using 5-gallon food buckets or 15-gallon plastic storage bins.  I took that advice and tricked out a Home Depot plastic pot because I wanted something a little prettier for my deck.  I wound up with the kit for expediency's sake.  I had tomatoes that needed planting and all my supplies last month -- but no will to move forward with my project.  The EarthBox kit was very easy.  The hardest part was pulling the sticker off the perforated base that separates the soil from the water.

I think the EarthBox kit was also less expensive than my home-made version was for the same growing space.  But I stand by my project.  My self-watering pots are cuter....

So here is what it took to make them:

• 2 plastic containers
• 2 Ups-A-Daisy planter inserts
• length of PVC pipe
• a power drill with router and drill bits
• cotton string to use as a wick for the water
• 2 cubic foot bag of potting soil
• dowel and styrofoam balls to make water indicator

This is how my helper and I put the pots together.  After enlarging one of the holes (so the PVC could fit), we put the Ups-A-Daisy insert in place and ran 4 strings from top to bottom.  We added a length of PVC (cut at angle at the bottom -- you could also just drill some holes in it so the water can get from the top to the bottom.)  Next I drilled some small overflow holes into my container so I wouldn't have to worry about flooding.  Then we filled our pot with water up to the insert (the EarthBox kit suggested this -- my guess is it helps keep the soil from falling through the holes.)

Then we added potting soil and plants, moved the wicks toward the center, clipped the wicks, and finally covered the wicks with additional soil so they wouldn't dry out.  (Please send happy thoughts to the poor pepper plant below....)

Finally, we made our water-level indicator by putting a stryofoam ball on the end of dowel and clipping it until it fit just inside the PVC pipe.   

Now I know if the dowel does't float to the top, I need to fill the container. I also will put a little landscape fabric cap on my pipe to keep water-breeding bugs out of my pot -- I don't want to have dinner with them on the deck.

I am hoping these fancy pots will give my container garden a fighting chance with my chaotic life.  Now I just need to figure out how to fertilize appropriately....

wireworm trap

This picture shows my wireworm trap in action.  I stuck a number of full-grown carrots throughout my raised bed.  I pull them up and check for takers.  Wireworms are not very fast.  In fact, they often "play stick" when pulled up in the trap.  I usually take my time and cut them in half with an old plant description stick. 

I felt silly using good carrots as bait -- but they have lasted a couple of weeks already and don't show much sign of decay.  I hear you can bury potatoes too but I haven't tried it yet.

using my new pest knowlege

I took a class last weekend on pest management in the garden through Seattle Tilth.  Walked away with a better appreciation of Integrated Pest Management -- and a curiousity about my weeds and flowers.

In IPM, prevention is the first strategy.  And a gardener must realize that there is no such thing as perfect.  A few holes or bad bugs doesn't mean failure -- it means you are part of something alive.  A gardener using IPM must be patient.  Live with the 'bad things' and make sure they are bad before acting.  This keeps you from applying a solution that is worse than the problem. 

I found these leaves in my raised bed -- but I don't know what is causing the problem, so my strategy is to OBSERVE until I do.  See, I am not too late.  I need time to understand (or to learn so I can understand.)  If the damage spreads quickly to other leaves, then I will act fast.  If not, I am free to dawdle. 

In the meantime, I can pick on the things I do understand.  Practicing IPM means spending more time looking at your garden closely.  The big things are obvious when they arrive.  

But the little things are there too.  This catapillar I found on on a piece of bark that made it into the raised bed.  Its color was so unusual (to me) that I took a picture of it before I squashed it (too close to my cabbage.) 

By looking closely I also found this guy.  Turns out it is a stink- or a shield-bug (it took a lot of internet research to figure that out.)  How did I make it out of childhood and not know that?!   I wasn't sure what to do about it since I kept seeing online that it likes to eat hawthorn leaves until I found this page that said it was happy eating any broadleaf plant.  Since I found it on the trellising above my struggling (hole-y) bean plants, I got rid of him.

The first 'aggressive' IPM strategy is physical control -- which includes making barriers and handpicking offenders.  I found the four slugs below under the wrapper leaves of my cabbage.  Clearly garden pests, they did not survive the shoe test.

 

I was really worried that all the holes in my cabbage leaves would mean the heads would be teaming with worms -- but they were beautiful once I opened them up.  I am wondering if all the damage was done by slugs and not the offspring of the white moth I saw in the yard.  But the slugs don't explain all the tiny poop I saw.  The next step in IPM strategy is to introduce natural predators to your garden -- maybe I got lucky and some good bugs took care of the (possible) cabbage maggots for me.

The last strategy for eliminating pests using IPM is employing a chemical control.  The tip is to always start with the mildest remedy -- such as soap spray.  And then make sure your soap spray is made out of a mild soap like Doc Bronners if you want to keep you veggies as healthy as can be.

Finally, I figured out that I am going to have to learn a lot more about bugs and plants before I really understand what is going on in my yard.  There is a lot to know about bugs (good and bad) and their lifecycles.  There is a lot to know about plants -- what I want to eat, what good bugs need to thrive, and what a weed's location might say about soil.