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

The flourishing garden- Week 3

the same set of tomatoes from last week growing big and strong

By late June our deck garden was growing at a speedy rate thanks in part to the unusually sunny weather. My tomatoes were already becoming giants and the plants themselves were taking over the deck. In fact the tomato plants had grown and spread so much at this point that the branches were growing outside of the constraints of the deck railings. The seedling were starting to take off, even the swiss chard seeds that I had planted only a week before. All was well in the small deck garden.

the tomato plants taking over part of the deck

the other side of the deck- peppers and seedlings starting to sprout

a side view of the tomato plants spreading outside of the deck

the pimento peppers blooming

my first swiss chard sprout