Showing posts with label Pests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pests. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

A Failure...

The Science Experiment Garden had our first big huge failure this year. Remember when we planted the radishes this fall. Well they failed. Quite dramatically actually.

Sad sad radishes

At the end of October, (about the same time we released the butterflies) I noticed the radishes looked rather sad. Really sad. Really really sad and pretty well eaten by something. A closer look showed us more little visitors, and not the friendly kind.


Sneaky little guy

This is a cabbage worm, which will eventually turn into a cabbage moth.  I do find it slightly funny since the broccoli (another one of their favorite foods) hasn't had a problem with them at all. Even now the broccoli is still alive and growing great and still producing. But the radishes apparently were rather tasty. So tasty in fact the plants were eaten bare. 


Fallen worms... But they were still alive
Being that it was late October when this happened, we decided to just pull the radishes. We found over 30 of the little buggers in the 2 pots. You can see 2 of them that fell off as we carried them through the house to the front yard to dispose of. Talk about nasty little buggers.


Radish Harvest. 
We harvested the radishes. This is all that was really worth keeping. I know part of it is that Pooka planted some of them too close together.  Okay all of them too close. This tells us next spring we are going to work on doing a seed tape or something (something new to learn and try next year). One failed experiment leads still teaches us something. Like watching a bit closer as a 4 yo puts seed in a bucket of dirt when it comes to root veggies. 

Thursday, June 7, 2012

HELP

So does anyone know a child-friendly bug killer? It seems something has decided the green peppers and sweet peppers are yummy and it is becoming a problem. I have tried the last day or so a soap and water solution but I kinda took a swag at it and I am not sure if it will help them or not.  Any ideas??
The plant on the bottom is my "I can't believe that plant is still alive?" plant. It's a sweet pepper that as a seedling someone watered too vigorously and it wouldn't stand up.  I transplanted it anyway (Figuring worst case it is fertilizer) and what do you know, it started to stand up again, but that's when whatever is attacking the plants got to it. Now it looks really sad. Even if I don't get a single pepper off that plant, but it lives till the end of the summer, I will be amazed. 

But seriously, anyone got a good idea to deal with the bugs? I am trying to stay away from chemical pesticides, but if that is what it takes to get those peppers a break, I will do it. 

Thanks and hope someone has an idea.