More crawlies

It is very much tent caterpillar season. Here is one with the mark of satan on its brow: a parasitic (ichneumon?) wasp has laid its egg on this unfortunate. There's a moral choice here: kill the caterpillar for a swift death, and wipe out a beneficial insect? Or leave the caterpillar to experience an Alien-type of death? Nature can be a difficult place.



Spring is also a time of digging in the garden, and I had an interested bystander last week who watched me carefully to make sure I had not uprooted the rock that was its home.



I decided to extend a little patch of garden by digging a couple of feet into the lawn



which meant digging up some grass and, in the process, a large population of wireworms



as well as a large population of leatherjackets, a couple of snails



and a cutworm larva.



My war against slugs continues, and I think I'm getting the upper hand, mostly by hand-picking at night. But I complement this activity with some slug traps made out of used styrofoam or plastic cups,



baited with home brew (water, yeast, sugar and flour) and it attracts a good number of drinkers who hang out in the bar past closing and then fall in.



I have been surprised by my slug populations' fondness for onions.



The chives are in full blossom, which is good for my salads and visiting bees:



The garden spiders have moved to the strawberry pots:



My overwintered artichoke has offered a second bulb and seems perfectly happy under the downspout of the garden shed, surprisingly. Plagued with ants though, and I'm not sure if that's harmful or not. More research needed.



The potato car tire experiment continues, behind the shed, next to the fence, so well out of direct sunlight. They seem happy enough so far, as do the burlap bag specimens.



The leeks are looking better in the pot than they do in the garden (where I suspect wireworms have been nibbling on their feet), and the radishes are helping to pass the time between them:



Lots of flowers on the fava beans:

Creepy spring

Last year's battles with tent caterpillars were gruesome, but I have (so far) managed to find and destroy the few nests that are turning up in my apple tree. Not so with the ones in my neighbour's plum tree - I have visitors dropping in periodically - but hopefully they will go away soon.



I believe this is a sowbug,



one of the night-crawling culprits who (together with the slugs) are making my rhubarb look like this:



I have been on slug patrol the past few nights and found so many slugs I lost count. Most are babies. I have been putting out slug brew for them (served in plastic party cups) and had quite a few takers, but will need to go slug-picking more often to keep them under control.

Meanwhile, I discovered several conglomerations of spiders, which I think are baby Garden Spiders. I would like them better if they ate slugs...



More potato experiments this year. I'm trying them in a burlap bag



as well as car tires again, and some in the earth as well. Meanwhile, the artichoke I planted last year survived the winter and looks like it will offer me something nice to eat this spring...

Potatoes and permaculture

Felt kind of smug seeing the output yesterday from my volunteer Norland potato - which yielded three or four jumbo spuds - and all of them, from first inspection, wireworm-free, which is most exciting, since this was the main place in my garden that seemed to have them. Also dug up a Yukon Gold that I'd already harvested from, so only little ones from there and could have been left a while longer if I'd looked carefully at the base. Oh well. I got an ice cream pail full anyway.



And the tomatoes continue to ripen; my big beauties have now been identified as Black Krim rather than the previously supposed Costoluto Fiorentino.



Even the slugs like them, alas, so some of the riper ones end up with little slug bites. But I'm going to be canning them over the next few weeks so hope to stay on top of them.

Someone from my neighbourhood gardening/food security group sent this great link to an Introduction to Permaculture, by its father, the Australian naturalist Bill Mollison. In his intro, written in 1981, he observes

The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests, the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west (and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry.

Too bad he's still right. Given the failure of will on the part of our governments, we can only make our own backyard food systems as sustainable as possible, buy only (as far as possible) from farmers who do likewise, and hope that a wave of consumer concern - voting with our minds and our wallets - brings positive change.

Urban gardening

I belong to a neighbourhood urban farmers/food security group and we often pass around articles of interest. Someone spotted this one, which is all about Will Allen and the Growing Power project, which involves 10,000 fruit, herb and veg container plantings in the Milwaukee site alone, and also produces fish, eggs, meat (chicken, goats, rabbits, turkeys) and honey. And a looooot of compost, many worms.

My urban garden has already produced a few tasties this year. I've never grown garlic before so was thrilled to bits today to dig up the first bulbs. They'll hang in the shed for a while - a couple of weeks I gather- to cure.



And here are my containers looking more lush now, in mid-July.



I went tomato crazy this year. Saved some seed from a big tasty heirloom beefsteak last year, grown from a seedling Tom gave me, and was taken aback by how many sprouted. didn't have the heart to do away with them so I have around 25 plants in pots, barrels, a Topsy-Turvy planter,



and an area of my garden I refer to as the Tomato Forest. So far, so good, though I'm still concerned about the leaf curl. It's been too windy to try my spray-on potions.



I have three other tomato varieties in slightly smaller numbers, plus a new one my brother gave me (wonder berries);



and a couple of relatives (tomatilloes and ground cherries/physalis), all in pots for the moment.

Some celery that's been growing in the wading pool. It was a strong and happy seed that I got from Kate and I've planted it all over the place as I heard it was good for deterring pests. Luckily I had it growing already by the time I heard it was hard to grow or I might not have tried.



Not sure if the eggplant will fruit, but I live in hope. Some is in pots and some in a barrel, with a bush bean for company. It's come along a lot over the past couple of weeks of hot weather.



The potatoes-in-car-tires have grown very tall. I'm curious to see what I might find in the layers. I'm a bit skeptical, as it does seem to me rather damp in the straw layers, but who knows.



I planted some more potatoes in the borders and when they started to sprawl I shored them up in cages, thinking the same concept as the car tires might work for them. They've grown very tall and gangly and unmanageable, dwarfing all around them.



Another occupant of the wading pools: radishes.



Everything in my garden is an experiment as I try to learn what grows where and how big and how well or badly and what eats what. Here are some purple sprouting broccolis outgrowing their pot. Honestly they looked so lame and weak when I planted them I put two in thinking maybe one would last. They have lasted well and are now much chewed by cabbage worm with lots of cabbage moths fluttering around them during the day looking for new parking places for their brood.