Just Some Tidbits

Ok, I'm still behind on a general status of my Green Children...working on it... but until then -

Recently in my world:

cleverly disguised caterpillars threw a wrench into my broccoli seed harvesting plan...

ok, they weren't solely responsible-the aphids helped

incidently I also discoverd cute fuzzy caterpillars freak out my momma >:)

Luckily I still like the fuzzy terrors so they went to the Sacrificial Cabbages.

Yes, I now have Sacrificial Cabbages, 4 of them. I keep finding caterpillars and the Sunflower leaves were already looking a bit frumpy so I had to expand. Can't get the darned cabbages to grow proper heads anyways...

I have given several gifts of Green Childrens to a friend and every visit I am astounded by how much bigger they are growing than ones I kept for myself! I mean seriously, my mint at home is struggling and his is overflowing. o.O

Believe it or not there is a strawberry pot within this Mint Monster.

I told ya!

Other Green Children that have gone steroids crazy with my friend include another mint (Lemon Balm), dill, and...I can't remember - it's almost lunch, I need food...

And lastly, a rare sight. So rare that many people believe the adults of the specie spontaneous spring from pools of standing gutter water. I present to you my encounter with a baby pigeon:

That's one of the parents behind it.

That's one thing I kind of like about Lowe's so far. The one I go to has a decent sized pigeon population in it's garden center and they seem to live and let live. Just hope no one wants to move this pallet soon.

This Morning

I've been meaning to do an update post on the general state of my garden and the parent's landscaping - but life is contriving to keep me from getting to it :/

So here' just a micro glance at what I paid attention to during my morning tending:

CATERPILLAR ON VEGGIE OH NOES!!!

Lucky for caterpillars I like butterflies and have a fear of accidentally killing off the last of an endangered species (and a buddhist buddy who would shake his head at me) - so I relocated it to a hefty Sunflower leaf that can survive it's infancy. It had been munching away on a cabbage - lucky for cabbage I wanted to harvest some outter leaves for a coworker to steam. Darn those purty white butterflies I saw last weekend! Great - a quick internet search tells me they may have been Small Cabbage Whites - and there were several all over my crop area! AH!

BTW that was one of the flower beds I planted about a month ago and I'm happy to report all green children are doing well! The calendula is already blooming and the statice isn't far behind! Although the cosmo seeds never came up o.O I did plant some zinnias in their place, and used some of the dill the other night.

I found this lovely lady chilling out on a celery leaf :) Said bug was under my poor aphid infested cauliflower and hopefully defending the celery from invasion! I've been randomly seeing ladybugs in my personal area - some of them stuck around hoorah! Don't know if they're from the ones I collected at the beach or the batch I bought a couple weeks ago at the nursery...

MY FIRST CAULIFLOWER OH NOES!!!

I ended up putting the whole thing into the green bin :( I was afraid of them spreading to my healthy plants. At least there is another cauliflower soon to be harvested :) And darn it I just remember I forgot to trim the quinoa that had leaf miners again grrrr....

That is all for today :) Have a swell week peoples

My First Leaf Miners :/

The little buggers went after my quinoa! At first I thought it must have been a hell of a lot hotter than I thought on Tuesday and that I must have forgotten to water one of them. Wednesday morning all the leaves were shriveled up. Then I notice that they were shriveled in a funny way and I though "omg they have that curling disease!"

Then I saw it was starting to affect the other quinoas so I investigated closer and found (dundundun):

Hmm there is something odd about those dark spots within those odd bubbles on these leaves. Perhaps it is time for some exploratory surgery here...

AHA! That's it - that's one of them! That pale wormy thing! I discovered 2 or 3 others between this and the other plants. All affected leaves were immediately snipped off and deposited in the trashcan with the tightest lid on the other side of the house. A quick internet search says they must be leaf miners! Larvae hatched from eggs inserted into the leaves, safe from predators but not bicycle cat ladies with pointy pruners and alot of angst /:) They could be baby flies, wasps or moths. I don't know what species this is and I'm not going to waste all morning looking. The only decent solutions I found were to use a certain organic pesticide (which needs to be reapplied twice in the growing season and not when there's a chance of bees hanging around-no) or companion planting my columbines nearby so they will attract leaf miner parent bugs away from my food crops.

...I think I love my columbines a little to much to do that to them...

I'm just going to keep a very close eye out for any more of them in that seedling area because they decimated the one quinoa in a day and got several more leaves on the other ones. I think they will recover since they didn't lose all of their leaves and they seem to be pretty tough little guys.

And thanks Em for finding amusement in my severe annoyance at these bad bugs.