Garden update
I picked about 9 lbs of green beans this weekend, along with our first red roma tomato that did not have blossom-end rot. I read on another blog that blossom-end rot seems to be particularly bad with romas, this year.
The warm weather seems to have put everything that survived the tree ahead of schedule. Two of my butternut squashes were ripe too. Got a sugar pumpkin last weekend.
The green beans had quite a few Mexican bean beetles, but like other year, by the time they find the plants, I’ve already got the whole crop in, so they do no real damage. This year and last, I’ve done no spraying. The only preventive measure I’ve taken was to plant them next to the potatoes and that seems to have made all the difference. The potatoes repel the Mexican bean beetles and the beans repel the Colorado potato beetles. The potatoes are getting close to being ready to harvest, and I haven’t seen a single potato beetle. Squashed a whole bunch of yellow bean beetles though.
(Knock on wood) I haven’t had a whole lot of pest problems this year, which surprises me. I thought the warm winter was going to make for a terrible bug season. Are any of you having bad pest infestations?
July 30, 2012 - 8:31 AM
Japanese beetles have been somewhat bad; our potato beetle infestation was not bad; no sightings of the bean beetle-we are on our 3rd picking of beans and we have had some blister beetles. I have a sweet autumn clematis vine growing on our garden fence and the blister beetles love it. The beetles then go to whatever is near in the garden. We are using Neem oil; BT; and a combination of Rotenone and Pryrethrium (for the blister beetles)(we don’t like to use this very much) for spraying. We have had to stop spraying the clematis because a sparrow has built a nest in the vine. So we are hand picking the bugs. The blossom end rot has slowed down. I have my first yellow squash forming and no sightings of blossom end rot on them.
Fewest stinkbugs I’ve had in years and june bugs were non-existant. Squash vine borers lost my address but since I never got the first squash, it didn’t make any difference. Second crop of squash is looking good and growing. Maybe some blooms in another month.
My pest is a dog.
I was asked to house and dog sit for some friends. The puppy managed to dig up and snap off most or all of the tomato plants and picked and murdered a couple baby water melons.
I felt bad about it, but I spoke to one of my friends today and he expected it to happen.