Photo Update: 5/5/13

So, we had to do some major overhaul recently...well...I should say Jim did most of it.

1. Godzilla totally did not like his net trellis, so Jim had to build him something more sturdy.  We figure he'll eat the house by next Thursday.

 Is this not awesome?  Jim is like a master of garden engineering. The coolest part about this thing is that it's adjustable, so if we want to change the angle so we can prune or harvest, those back legs are on a hinge.  Also, the whole thing detaches from the planter, so we could move it anywhere/reuse it anywhere.  I was so proud of him for building this! 

2. Once we stopped Godzilla from taking over the planter, we discovered our nice little spinach plants underneath.  Some of them are a little wilty from not enough sun.  Also, some of them got chomped by armyworms, those fuckers.

3. The tomatoes in the smaller planter also have a whole lot more room since Godzilla has been reigned in.

This is Oswald.  I'm a genius and threw out the little thing that tells you the breed of the tomato, so I don't know what Oswald is, but I seem to remember something about Cherokee Purple.  Either way, he's doing really well!  Three big tomatoes are growing and one just popped out.

4. Transplants and Goodbye to a Legend:  So of all things; of all the plants that could poop out in this whole endeavor; I am sad to say that we had to uproot and toss Mr. Stripey!  For some reason, he just never bloomed.  Never developed any flowers or fruit, so we tossed him in the woods.  But we got a new Mr. Stripey (Son of Stripey IV), and a friend for him...a Black Prince heirloom breed named Dracula!

Grow, Son of Stripey, grow!  Also pictured: Radley and the Radishes

In light of the monster that is Godzilla, we took Rocco (Cucumber #2) out of the small planter and put him in the large one, and also put a cage around him for to grow up (although if he goes mutant like Godzilla, that thing is not going to cut it.

 

More on pests and pesticides...

So we had an infestation of army worms and leaf miners.  In case you don't know, these are army worms:

Their job?  To fuck up your world.  Obviously.

And these are leaf miners...rather, this is the path of a leaf miner.  They are really tiny and actually live inside the leaf:

So if you see that kind of nonsense in your yard (they attack everything), now you know what it is.

I've mentioned this ad nauseum I'm sure, but we started this whole thing to get our stomachs away from pesticides.  So far, we've been trying really, really hard to only use things that are natural, but we've had to up the ante a bit.  We're still using organic-farm-approved pesticides, but we recently developed a fungus (mildew) from all the rain last week, so we had to take care of that as well.

Thinking about all this, it's almost a wonder that human civilization has persevered thus far through all the crap that can happen to crops.  Of course, there was the Potato Famine in Ireland which was a shit-show, and others as well, but for the most part, we've been doing agriculture pretty okay so far.

More next week!

 

Oh no... there goes Tokyo

And now for the weekly update...(4/27/13)

As you can see, one of our cucumbers has gone absolutely insane.  I'm calling it Godzilla.

We put up a net trellis for Godzilla and Godzilla Jr. to climb.  Apparently, cucumbers yield more fruit when they grow on a trellis.  I don't know how good we're doing getting it to climb though. 

The tomatoes are doing well, except something is chomping the lower leaves and I don't know what it is.  I'm not sure the organic soap is working so I'm going to get some neem oil this weekend. 

We had a minor mishap with the mesclun.  I feed the plants a plant food every month. The directions say to put it along the drip line... no.  If you put it along the drip line it will MOLD.  I sprayed the mold with a 1:20 vinegar solution and put the planter in the yard in full sunlight. I think it's getting better. 

The spinach plants are growing steadily.  Godzilla blocks some of them from full sunlight but they're still growing. 

All of the other plants are doing great except Mr. Stripey!  Yes it seems his "great adventure" is to grow leaves and jack shit else!  I think we're going to transplant him into the big planter and see if he does any better.