Well, we had a semi-productive weekend in terms of gardening. I was able to get all of my peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant into the ground, and they’re looking pretty good for the most part. I did lose a couple peppers in the first few days, to what I’m thinking was maybe cutworms? Chopped them right off just above the soil line, and left the top sitting there to make me mad. Anybody have experience with these?
The beans are all doing fantastic, with the exception of the soybeans, of which maybe eight are up – for some reason, most of them just kind of snapped right as they were breaking the surface. I’ve never seen that before, and I’m not sure the cause. I tried to make a trellis out of sticks yesterday for the pole beans, but I’m not totally satisfied, and I’ll probably redo it this weekend. I’m open to pointers from any resident trellis experts.
Most of the squash and cucumbers are up too, and looking good so far. It’ll be interesting to see how the powdery mildew is later on this summer – it’s something I always fight with.
The only plants that aren’t really doing much are the lettuce and spinach. I planted the first batch just about two months ago exactly, and I’m still not close to harvesting anything. The lettuce has started to look better just in the last week or so, but the spinach is still wimpy. Everything germinated okay, but it seems like they’ve been the exact same size for the past month. The spinach in particular has a bunch of leaves, but they’re all very small, and the lower ones are already starting to yellow. This is all new to me – usually lettuce and spinach grow well and bolt before I can use it all. My only thought is that it’s weather-related, and the wetness has affected it. Anybody else have any ideas?
I also put in a little herb garden, but I’ll have more details on this in a later post, so stay tuned.
How’s everyone liking the warm weather?
Oh yes, that is an evil cutworm for sure. Do you put collars around your plants? When the stems are still thin, they need to be protected from cutworms by a surrounding barrier pushed into the soil. Could be anything, as long as it surrounds the plant and is about an inch high at least. Big metal coffee cans with the tops and bottoms off are the easiest (and also trap some heat, which is nice for heat-loving plants), but I make a lot of cutworm collars every year by cutting horizontal strips from old sour cream or yogurt containers. They curve right around naturally and you can just push them into the soil in a circle around the seedling. Then take them away when the stem is a little thicker and no longer susceptible to cutting from those wretched worms.