Pride and Pests
I'm so proud of our garden.
The tomatillos are really tall, with puffy little balloons that are filling out. There are cute little tomatoes and even the melon plant is starting to branch out.
After all the garlic was pulled, I transplanted a zucchini plant (which I hope will survive the move) and planted a whole bunch of new seeds (fava beans, tomatoes, zucchini, fennel, cavolo nero).
The sunflower is incredible. See for yourself!
It's 10 feet tall!
All this garden happiness is, sadly, becoming clouded. By a HUGE swarm of thousands of japanese beetles.
Eating, fornicating, and defecating. It's seriously creepy.
Right now, they're devouring the bee ivy, but they've started moving on to the rose and grape. I really want to kill them, just to minimize the ooky factor. D. wants to kill them because he's sick of me saying "Why won't the birds eat the bugs?" But above all I want to protect my precious vegetables, herbs, and butterfly bush.
What can I do?
posted by K. @ 9:16 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
The bugs are too crunchy for birds.
Sevin, is what I like. Malathion is OK too for not flowering things (deadly to bees)
Put down some grub killer in your lawn.
Or I use the hose and wash them off every day can help. They'll be gone in a couple of weeks.
You garden looks terrific (except for the creepy bug factor!). :) Are you using the square foot method in those boxes?
I'm swimming in zucchini and tomatoes at the moment. Hooray for summer!
I do a kind of lazy woman's Square Foot system. I know...how can you get lazier than Square Foot? Well, I have.
I use the Square Foot boxes, generally split them in Square Foot areas for planting, and use the SFG soil recipe. I don't worry too much about the complicated succession planting schedule.
As an update to this post: I harvested my first Principe Borghese tomato this weekend, plus a nice zucchini and both green and purple! tomatillos.
Also, despite my general organic tendencies, I used a chemical to kill the bugs. And it worked like crazy, and I gloated as their little bodies dropped to the ground.
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