garden week 4- the aphids are taking over!

By late June all was well in the garden but Sean noticed some funky looking dots on the leaves of some of the pepper plants, in particular the yellow belle pepper plant. We looked and sure enough the underside of the leaves of the plant were covered in aphids. Also there were a couple large ugly black bugs with orange on their back inhabiting the leaves too. We didn’t know what they were, so Sean decided to quarentine the plant by putting in a plastic garbage bag. We went out and talked it over with his parents and found out that indeed we had aphid but we also had baby lady bugs (the ugly black bugs).  After finding all of this out we came home, researched organic ways to kill the pests and save the plant.

By mixing a little bit of oil with water and spraying the plants leaves and then wiping away the bugs we were sucessful for the time being. Although the plant suffered greatly from be in a bag for a long period of time so we weren’t sure if it would make it. This would not be the last of the aphids.

one of the first edible flowers in bloom

a lady bug on the basil- a couple days before we discovered why it would be in the garden

the tomatoes and herbs

pimentoes with aphids!

baby belle peppers

aerial shot of the pepper plants and my seedlings

more tomatoes

You know you are an earth sign when….week one of the garden

So yes, let’s get it out there right in the open….I am Taurus so I do love my home which includes my garden. Although it has taken me a while to fully appreciate the gifts that a garden can produce, I am now forever grateful to it. Below is the story behind this year’s summer garden, enjoy!

baby tomatoes

I started a small garden on our deck this year after being inspired by my fiancée Sean’s garden last year on our deck. Admittedly, I was skeptical last year about the amount of produce we could actually grow on our apartment deck. I was also not as into cooking as I am now, which every good cook knows nothing beats garden fresh produce. We started off by planting some herbs together this year but Sean got busy and tired from work while my job ended and I had the time to attend the garden. So that brings us to the present where I am the keeper of the deck garden and Sean is the observer/reaper of the benefits.

The garden started off small with just a planter of cilantro, thyme and mint along with two pots of basil but quickly grew to something much bigger. After Sean’s gardening experience of last year we learned what we wanted to plant again and what we could skip out on this year. Our culinary tastes have also changed in the past year as well, so we wanted to incorporate some different herbs like tarragon and marjoram this year too.

Another big lesson from last year was the amount of sun the garden gets, we get a ton of it. The sun our garden gets allowed us to have two large tomato plants and one green belle pepper plant last year. It was time for garden expansion this year by adding another tomato plant (3 in all) as well as five pepper plants ranging from a pimento plant to a jalapeño plant.

The pictures in this post are of the garden in it’s baby stages about the first two weeks or so. The greater Seattle area has been having unusually sunny weather recently thus the plants have grown tremendously since these first pictures. There will be weekly updates on the garden and other things in my life in the hopes that this will somehow inspire fellow apartment dwellers to start a garden on your deck or patio.

a pimento pepper coming out of the flowering stage waiting to be planted

baby tomatoes coming out of the flowering stage

a view of the tomato plants, the lettuce planter and an herb planter

more tomatoes