And now, pretty pictures of a butterfly

Wouldn't want my last post to be gross bugs.  So here, enjoy some pretty pictures of a butterfly.  You're welcome.

Ewwwww

I was out in the garden on Friday and spotted this little dude.

Ewwwww.  Caterpillar thingy?  What is wrong with you!  What's with all the weird little cotton puffball things coming off your back?!

But I let him be.  Today I went back and caterpillar thingy looks like this:

Ewwwww-er.  What in the?!?  From what I can tell the little white cotton puffballs sucked caterpillar dry.  Gerrrrroooooossssss.

I came inside and was thinking I should probably nicely ask a boy to come over and kill the gross caterpillar parasite things so I didn't have to touch it but I wanted to figure out what those disgusting little vampiric buggers were.  Well, good thing I did!  Turns out the pretty green caterpillar (rest in peace) was a tomato hornworm larva and the vampiric buggers are trichogramma wasps.  "Nooo!  No wasps!! I've already got mosquitoes all over my garden!"  Well, turns out these wasps are listed as a beneficial parasite in my garden book.  They're too small to sting people and apparently are so small we usually don't even see them (1/100 to 1/25 of an inch).  They feed on the eggs of insects that are plant eaters but don't harm the actual plants.

So I guess I shouldn't kill the gross little suckers.  Dern.

Container vs. Garden-Round 2: Carrots

So how did the other half of my giant container o' carrots and onions turn out?  Well, the carrots are thankfully at least appearing to still be a work in progress.  They're still pretty puny BUT the greens look very healthy.  Carrot instructions say to try to water a very small amount every day and to try to till or loosen the soil a bit so the carrots have more room to grow.  I promise from here on out to try to give them all the TLC they can handle and see if I can salvage them after the great onion massacre that occurred right next to my poor carrot babies.

At least so far it appears that the container carrots are doing far better than the garden carrots.  They're either thicker or longer or both (insert penis joke I'm too lazy to come up with here).  And just as a reminder, this year I'm trying a cool purple variety of carrot so their color is normal.

Next round: Peppers!

Container vs. Garden-Round 1: Onions

On Monday I did a HUGE weeding of the raised garden bed.  Filled an entire trash can full of weeds and loved every cathartic minute of it.  Just after an energizing jog in the rain I figured "hey! there won't be any mosquitoes out in this downpour...time to WEED!"  I'd been putting off weeding far too long due to this year's terrible mosquito problems.  I would only make it 5 minutes even with bug spray on before I'd have dozens of bites.  So I kind of just gave up and fantasized about creating a perimeter of citronella torches around the garden so I can weed free from fear some day.  But no longer!

So, it was time to do an assessment of the veggies that are done growing.  The peas, beans, broccoli, lettuce, and chard are full-on failures.  They were all decimated by critters (I've seen both bunnies and deer snacking away) before the weeds took hold.

On to the matchup.  There was a clear winner in the onion category, which you will see from this visual...

And as you can see, that winner is Mother Nature.  That stupid wench better be getting a good laugh out of this poor showing.  I got all excited with how quickly the little suckers sprouted and started shooting up happy green onion grass and this is all I get for all my hard work?!?  The garden onions stopped growing sooner but probably has the larger of the onions whereas you can see the container onions still have some greens on top but they're no longer healthy.  I might try a smaller number next year and work on tilling the soil around the onions once a week to see if that helps their ability to expand, but it was pretty disappointing all around.  Screw you mother nature...screw you.  Not a useable onion in the bunch.

Next round: Carrots!

Container eggplants update

Hi all! I know I've been more than a bit negligent about posting but now that my harvests (or lack thereof) are coming in I'm going to try to start posting more updates on how the veggies are doing.

This picture shows you the lackluster results of my container eggplant. They are so small I can't imagine using them in cooking; the largest of the fairy tale eggplants is only about 4 inches. That lovely dark purple veggie next to the fairy tale eggplants shockingly ISN'T an eggplant. It's one of my sweet peppers from the pepper grow bags. I've eaten a few and they were delicious and I love the fun purple color. 

My eggplants appeared to have some sort of microscopic pest bothering it so I sprayed it down with some pest spray and its bouncing back nicely. Well see if it gives another round of veggies that are a bit more useable but I'm not holding my breathe. Happy Monday everyone!