Pea harvest underway, a small handful per day

Not the most sweet, but nice and fresh.

First Japanese beetle found

Found on a plant in the fence-front bed.  Here it comes!

Spotted a spotted asparagus beetle on the asparagus

Very cute!  Red with dots.  Big green book says they don't do much damage at all, so, put back.

Ground cherries -- first harvest

The first ground cherries have fallen to the ground!  A small handful.

About half were still green or semi-green.

Cucumber beetles appearing daily, but still only a few -- and only on squashes

Only 1 or sometimes 2 per day that I'm seeing.  Relocating.

First ronde de nice harvested

It's cute!  Will take some getting used to though, the colour and shape.

Haven't eaten it yet.

2nd zucchini harvested

From same plant as 1st zucchini.  The other zucchini plants are far behind.

Zinnia tally -- hopefuls early in process, vs. actually planted out

Early in the seed-starting process, this is how many zinnias I thought I'd have (i.e. the ones that were transferred from paper towel baggie into soil -- v.s. -- how many actually made it into the garden:

Tall:  58 hopefuls; 48 planted into garden

Short:  27 hopefuls; 14 planted into garden

Some were tossed because they were looking suspicious for thrips.  Others were tossed because of failure to thrive.

Ground cherries look GREAT now! Maybe thanks to the hot weather?

We've been in a heat wave; they seem to quite like it.

A few more three-lined potato beetles and cucumber beetles found

Still just the occasional one though.

Haven't actually seen the potato beetles on the potatoes (they've been on the ground cherries).

The one recent cucumber beetle was in a squash flower.

First zucchini harvested!

Looks like one more is on the way soon.  Then after that it might be a bit because there's been a rash of male flowers.

First ronde female flower

And there was a male to pollinate it with.

Cucumber beetle found in squash flower

Only the one.  Removed.

Pea tops looking wilty/rotty again -- were fine yesterday

Must have to do with watering too much or too little.  I bet they'll be fine again in a day or two.

Paper wasps greatly enjoying water bowl

Wow, there is quite the steady stream of paper wasps to my water bowls in the garden!

At first I noticed them frequently in the stainless steel bowl set by the air conditioner.

Today I noticed them mostly in the small old ceramic half-bowl which is set in among the beets.  Maybe that one doesn't get as hot.

Pretty sure they're paper wasps, based on this article:  https://www.rescue.com/latest-buzz/outdoor-pests/how-to-tell-a-wasp-from-a-yellowjacket/.  The ones I'm seeing have the give-away orange antenna, and are quite long and skinny.

My garden insects book says paper wasps are great to have around, as they eat insects.  Mostly these ones seem to be coming and going only for the water, though I did see one spend several minutes flying around / landing on the beets.


This article lists a wide variety of wasps, with identifying photos:  http://www.scorpionfly.ca/plants/wildlifegarden/Beneficial%20wasps.html

Fireflies

Saw a firefly yesterday evening.  They're so nice to see.

Ack! Two types of insects -- one on chard, one on tomatoes!

Chard have tiny orange beetles.

Tomatos have what I assume are flea beetles.  Small and black and they jump way.

Still not finding any more cucumber beetles

The Edible Gardens group is full of reports of hordes of cucumber beetles... not here yet, just that one from yesterday...

Three lined potato beetle found (first in a while)

Found on the container ground cherry.

Checked all ground cherries for eggs, didn't see any.

Container ground cherry and tomato not looking so great anymore -- not terrible, but not great

The container ground cherry just looks palish, whereas all of a sudden the central ground cherries are starting to look happy.

The container tomato is having foldy leaves at the new growth, and also has turned palish compared to the central tomatoes.

Nothing too drastic in either case, but something to watch.

Downy Leatherwing Beetle, aka Soldier Beetle

Found this evening on the big central sunflower.  Adorable!  Didn't interfere.

Apparently they eat aphids, though I'm not aware of any aphids currently...hmm...

One of my photos looks exactly like the one at this page:  https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Soldier-Beetle-Podabrus

Peas starting to appear

Lots of flowers now, and the first peas are starting.  Should be harvesting within a week or so.

Third female zucchini -- pollinated this time

Also on that one great zucchini in the NW bed.  Pollinated with a male from one of the air conditioner zucchinis.

Sunflower maggot flies appearing in multiples

Saw four on one sunflower, a couple on another.  And yes, a "couple" they were...

Not going to do anything about them this year, and see if the plants/flowers/seeds make it.

Striped cucumber beetle spotted in a sunflower

Haven't seen one in several weeks... maybe they will be starting to appear again now.

American Carrion Beetle

Found in yard near the kitchen steps.  First time ever seeing one of these, pretty sure!  Placed near compost bin in case they'd like to stick around.

https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=American-Carrion-Beetle

Spiders are a garden's best friend?

Here's a great article all about spiders in the garden.  https://www.growjourney.com/garden-spiders-beneficial/#.Xupx2Dl7lVc

I know all this stuff, but, there is still nothing in this world that sends a literal shiver up my spine than spiders.

Though I have to say, after last year of dealing with so. many. insect. eating the plants, this year when I see spiders in the garden I consciously tell myself that it's a good thing, and I don't relocate the spider webs unless they're in a particularly bad spot like across a path.

Also, I thank orienteering for getting me mostly over my fear/hatred of walking through webs.  I used to absolutely hate when this would happen, but now it's happened so much while orienteering that it's not such a big deal... as long as I never have to see the actual spider who made the web!

Garlic scapes are becoming harvestable

Several of the garlic plants have scapes with a full curl.

Also, several of the garlic plants don't seem to have any scape emerging yet, especially the ones along the back (north) edge of the north wall, which according to my blog are the Duganski.  Maybe those ones are typically later to mature, compared to my other variety (German White)?

Second female zucchini flower opened, but no male to pollinate it!

What a travesty!  This female is also on the one in the NW bed (same as the first female).

Not interfering with the flea beetles anymore as of today

Will stop rehoming them as of today.  All the types of plants the flea beetles like are looking healthy and strong, so they should be able to withstand whatever damage.  Or so I hope!

Wood sorrel!! Not clover! WTH!

Wow, I learned today that all these years letting what I thought was clover grow in the garden to add nitrogen, isn't clover at all, but wood sorrel.  Who knew!

Although wood sorrel doesn't add nitrogen, it *is* edible -- quite tasty in fact, such a nice tang! 

First butternut babies

Both of the central butternuts have a tiny fruit that has appeared.  The vertical ones might too but harder to get a close look at those ones.

Sunflower maggot fly has been hanging around the sunflowers

Noticed this interesting looking fly on the central-central sunflower the other day (at first thought it was a spider).  Yellow, with bright green eyes, and a neat pattern on part-translucent wings.

Today the fly was on the big sunflower in the west bed.

They lay eggs, which eat parts of the plant.  Apparently they don't do much damage in the process unless there are a whole bunch.  So, I've leave it be.

Leaf miner: Quite a few beet leaves affected; removed eggs today

Removed whatever eggs I could find today, as well as the leaves that are already affected.

Later on I read the miners don't usually affect plant health/yield, they just make leaves unattractive for eating.

Basil leaves turned brown overnight! Cool night? Or something else?

While watering today I saw that a bunch of the basil leaves have turned brown!  What the heck!  I did a harvest yesterday and it looked good (though the west bed still have quite crinkly leaves).

Feedback on the Edible Gardens group suggests it looks like frost damage or intolerance to cold temperatures -- I'm sure there was no frost last night (went down to 8 according to Environment Canada) -- but hopefully yes it just didn't like the sub 13 degrees.

It doesn't quite look like most of the photos I'm finding on bacterial leaf spot nor downy mildew -- so, let's go with the cold.

Cool nights ahead tonight and tomorrow, didn't cover anything last night but will cover the basil tonight.

A few more leek moths found in garlic past few days

Including one today.

Flea beetles on potatoes too now

The flea beetles are still around.  I've been collecting them daily.  Today I noticed they're all over the potatoes too.  Holes in many leaves, but the plants themselves look great, healthy.

The bitty broccoli was delicious!

Steamed lightly, served with margarine and vinegar.

Zucchini updated -- first female flower opened!!

So far the best zucchini plant by far is the one in the west bed.  The first female flower opened today!  And there was a male flower in one of the air conditioner plants!  So I pollinated it.  We'll see if it takes!  This one plant hasn't aborted anything yet, looks really good.

The two zucchinis by the air conditioner both have looked wimpy, pale green.... but growing, and don't look sickly necessarily.  They came in handy today for a male flower.

The second best zucchini is one of the ones in the hydro meter bed, but still quite far behind the best plant.

(None of the rondes are flowering yet)

Fridge beets going to seed

The beets from last year that lasted all winter and that I planted back into the garden this spring are going to seed.  The seed heads are there, just not opened/flowered yet.  Cool!

Leaf miners in chard and beets

I'm not too worried about it.  Removed affected leaves or parts of leaves today.

First ever broccoli harvest! (tiny though)

Woo!  The most advanced of the broccoli plant has had a little head forming for a bit.  Today I could see the flowers are on the verge of opening, so I harvested it.  It's small, very easily fits within the palm of my hand.

Turnips not forming bulbs

I pulled 3 or 4, just a whole bunch of leaves.  Too much nitrogen?  Will leave the others for longer.

Black Seeded Susan lettuce bolting; others not bolting yet

Still tastes good though.  Will leave one or two to go to seed.  Apparently lettuce is easy to collect seed from, doesn't cross-pollinate.

3 more leek moth caterpillars in garlic; scapes are coming out (some destroyed)

I found the caterpillars by looking for new damage.

Scapes are coming out.

Some of the scapes I destroyed/removed while removing the caterpillars.  Wonder if they'll produce.  According to this article, they should be fine... https://www.thestar.com/life/2017/07/14/new-research-says-removing-scapes-will-improve-your-garlic-yield.html

Reference: Collecting lettuce seeds

Saw a comment on the Edible Gardens group about saving lettuce seeds.  For some reason it never occurred to me that I could save lettuce seeds.  Lettuce starts bolting, gets bitter, gets pulled and put into the compost bin.  Well, guess what I'm going to do this year...  Cool!

Came across this handy webpage about how to save lettuce seeds.

https://www.urbanfoodgarden.org/main/seed-saving/seed-saving-methods/seed-saving-methods--lettuce.htm

Short zinnia all true to colour so far

So weird... the tall ones' colours were all over the place, whereas so far all of the short ones' colours have been true.  They're not all showing open flowers yet so we'll see if they'll be 100% or not.

Flea beetle update: Steady, not overwhelming. Rehoming daily.

^^^

14 leek moth caterpillars found in garlic!! Must look at the very NEWEST leaves, down close to the center.

What did I say yesterday?  Too funny!  Turns out I wasn't checking close in enough to the main growing stem.  Almost all the garlics had at least one caterpillar, some had more than one.

Removed the parts where they were living in, which in some cases might have been a young scape, not sure, but the leaf was tubular.

Some basils trying to start to go to seed

(So I'm harvesting/pruning them)

Basil/parsley harvest, made pesto -- &, basil leaves curly and weird

Yum.

However, all the basil in the west bed, the newest growth is curly and weird looking.  The ones in the container look fine.

No sign of leek moth on garlic yet

Have been checking.... of course now that I write this post, I'm sure to find some tomorrow!

Central squash and central ground cherries not growing much, not thriving

This happened last year too, with the central patch.

The butternut and cushaw in the central patch haven't done much, kind of yellowy, whereas the butternut and cushaw in the west bed against the house are looking great, green and vibrant.

The ground cherries in the central patch have kind of frozen in time, don't seem to be growing, not full and lush.  The best ground cherry is still the one in the container which looks great, go figure; the other two ground cherries in the west/north bed are decent too.

The tomatoes in the central patch all look good, though one is on the small side and of course the two determinate Scotias are quite small too, but look healthy (though not seeing much new growth on the Scotias).  The tomato in the container also looks very good.

The sunflowers in the central bed all look good, as well as the short, stocky, lush one in the west bed.

I'm not too worried about those wimpy looking central bed plants, since this happened last year and the squash ended up crazy productive, the ground cherry too.  So, fingers crossed they will pull through.

Broccoli appearing!

Ooooh, the biggest broccoli plant has some broccoli appearing!!

Peas look great again, the May 27th issue went away on its own

No idea what that issue was, but all the peas look great again.  I did water them that night, maybe that helped.

Give-aways

Gave away 2 each of cucumber, cushaw, butternut, yellow zucchini, and ronde de nice.

Zinnias (tall) transplanted -- short zinnias not yet because colours not yet revealed

The tall zinnias look great in their new home.  Some in the backyard; most in front of house; some at the two sides of the house.

A few were unopened so will be a surprise what colour they'll be.

Went down to 3 last night!

Hopefully everything was snug in their get-up.