The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 

OK, first some triumphs!

First big red tomato in the garden today!:

 

I've had handfuls of cherry tomatoes for a week or so, but this was the first ripe full size 'mater.
Woot.

Next to the tomatoes, the scarlet runner beans are flowering and are so pretty!

This has been the week of cabbages and onions. The onions were starting to pop out of the ground and a few stalks were falling down, and the cabbages were continuing to get chomped by Sir Chomp-a-lot (the rabbit), his bunny friends, and cabbage worms, so I thought I'd just pull the whole thing and start fresh with some new crops.

Cabbage

 

More Cabbage. There were also two purple cabbages that we made into a yummy cabbage, crunchy Ramen noodle salad. Saved one leaf to show you how pretty they were!

Onions curing in the sun

Cabbages and onions before they were picked

A semi triumph/semi fail.... little purple carrots. I picked them early because once again, the rabbits found them and started nibbling through the netting I put up to protect them. They're small, but they're still pretty, and basically we have gourmet purple baby carrots. Which is cool.

This year I definitely learned that if you want to keep rabbits away you need FENCE.

FENCE around scarlet runner beans. It works! No nibbles!

Another good thing...there are some tiny melons growing!

Melon Vines

Baby Melon!

 This was taken a few days ago, the melons are already getting bigger!

OK, and now the bad... vine borers have attacked the pumpkin plants, and probably the zucchini too. You can tell because the plants get all droopy.

Pre attack: perky and happy

After attack: droopy and sad

What is a vine borer, you ask? A moth that looks a lot like a red bee kind of thing 

I've never actually seen one - this is from localkitchener.wordpress.com

It lays eggs at the base of your plant, and when they hatch, these little white grubs with black heads boreholes into the base of your squash vine, and basically eat the vine from the inside out.

GROSS.

Today I watched some youtube videos on how to do "surgery" on your squash/pumpkin plants to get the larvae out (Google it! There are lots out there!).  Then I went out with a sharp knife did my best to obliterate them. Brought my camera with me but it was so hot and they were so disgusting, I forgot to take pics. Plus, I didn't really know what I was doing. I found them and *think* I got all of them out (there were multiple in each vine) on the pumpkin plants above. I have another variety of pumpkin and some zucchini that are also wilting though. I'm sure it's because of the borers, but I couldn't find the entry holes. I cut the heck out of one of the other pumpkin vines, found nothing, and may have done terminal damage to that poor plant. 

Oh, by the way, after cutting a slit through the vine and getting rid of the larvae, the final step is mounding soil/compost around the cut up vine, covering up the cut. The vine (so they say) will  heal itself and the plant will recover.

A few years ago one of my friends was telling me that if you can't figure out where the borers are, you can go out at night with a flashlight, shine it behind the vine, and you'll  see them moving around in there and know where to cut. I guess that's my plan for the rest of the pumpkins and zucchinis. Could be a fun adventure for the kids too... Wish me luck!

I'll leave you with a view of the newly cleared out and replanted (with carrots and bush beans) area of the garden:

The boards over the carrots seeds are supposed to help with germination

 Those are ground cherries in the far back right. All started as volunteers in the garden and were transplanted over there. Yay free plants!

I'll fence in the areas where the carrots and beans are planted in the next week, before stuff starts sprouting and the rabbits visit.

OK, now I'll *really* leave you, with a picture of some new pink wave petunias on our back deck (with compost peeking through the deck slats), and our crazy Hungarian wood gnome dude. 

Happy gardening!