Up and Down Week with the Veggie Garden

It has been and up and down week with the garden.  I had been having so much fun until recently, but now I am getting discouraged.

I still feel it was a good idea to start with a fall garden, because I have had lots of opportunity to focus on only a few types of plants at a time.  Unfortunately I forgot that the many different predators are more adapted to our backyard and its climate than the vegetable plants I am trying to grow.

I have not given up yet, but I am afraid the arrow on the success-failure dial is wiggling in the middle and starting to dip towards failure.  I am hoping that things will turn around once the weather gets cooler and the plants are happier, but here are the current problems.

Newly installed second trellis on Sunday, 7-31-16

First the good news.  The good news is that the tomato plants, peppers, and cantaloupe are all growing.   The cantaloupe is is especially doing well.  It is producing lots of flowers, including both male and female blossoms.

Cantaloupe flowers.  The male flower is on the left and the female flower (with a mini pre-cantaloupe fruit at the base of the flower) is on the right.

There are also lots of flying insects around the blossoms, including an occasional honeybee, all of which can presumably pollinate the flowers.  I have not yet seen any cantaloupes that are obviously beginning to develop, but I am hopeful.

At least one pepper on the Big Bertha pepper plant is turning red and is nearly ripe.

Finally, it is now August, so it is time for the next wave of plantings.  We added a second trellis (primarily for the pole beans) and on Monday, August 1, planted two squares of pole beans (8 seeds each), one square of bush wax beans (9 seeds) and one square of bush green beans (9 seeds).

Now the bad news.  The bad news is that every type of plant is under assault and having problems of some sort. 

High temps. The tomatoes and peppers are not setting any new fruit, presumably due to the high temperatures (typically around 100 F each afternoon and no lower than about 78-80 in the mornings). However, lots of posts online indicate they will begin to do so rapidly once the temperatures drop if I can keep the plants growing until then. 

Spider mites.  The lower branches of the tomato plants seem to have spider mites.  It was spreading rapidly across the four plants and up each plant.  Spraying with insecticidal soap seems to have contained the problems to the lower branches, but I am continuing to monitor the situation.

Paul Robeson tomato plant with spider mite damage on lower branches

Aphids and ants.  There were ants on the underside of some of the cantaloupe leaves, generally clustered around some small yellow things.  I think the yellowish things are aphids.  There are varying opinions about whether ants are a problem or not in the garden, but the aphids are a problem. The aphids live by consuming the juice from the plant leaves, which of course is not good for the leaves.  I sprayed the cantaloupe with insecticidal soap, which seemed to get rid of the aphids initially.  According to the web, the ants are only interested in the aphids, or actually the aphids' honeydew, and not actually the plants so they also initially disappeared.  To get enough protein, the aphids have to suck a LOT of sap.  The extra unused sap, which includes lots of carbohydrates (i.e. sugar), is excreted by the aphids, hence the interest by the ants.  There are suggestions that the ants actually bring the aphids back so they can collect the honeydew from them, i.e. they are farming the aphids.   Despite an initial decline, both the ants and the aphids reappeared with a vengeance.

There were so many ants that I thought their nest might be in the flower bed.  Even though some people think ants are a good thing in the garden, I decided to try and get rid of them since there were so many.  But how should I proceed to get rid of them?  After some considerable looking, including finding them ahead of time in their inventory online, I finally tracked down some boric acid at a Walgreens in Flower Mound.  Even then, the manager had to go digging around in the back room for their last two bottles.  Who knew it would be so difficult to find?!

I dissolved the boric acid in some orange marmalade from the back of the cupboard.  The marmalade had a "Best used by date" of 09-00, so it seemed like a good candidate for this project!  I put the boric acid/marmalade mixture into a larger jar and laid it on its side under the cantaloupe leaves.  The ants were definitely interested.

Within a day there was a trail of thousands (or at least hundreds) of ants which I followed out of the garden, across the yard and at least 30 feet away into one of the rat bait boxes left by ABC Pest Control.  Gently raising one corner of the box caused a massive flurry of ant activity.  Yes, I think this is their nest.  I did not expect it to be so far away from the garden.

I left everything alone, hoping all of the worker ants would transport enough boric acid back to the nest so it would kill the queen and hence the entire colony.  I am still waiting on that.  If they don't go away soon, I can probably take more action on the nest directly now that I think I know where it is.

In the meantime, there seem to be many more ants with aphids on the cantaloupe.  I am spraying yet again with insecticidal soap.

Squash vine borers?  Even worse than ants, aphids, or spider mites is the possibility of invasion of the cantaloupe by squash vine borers.   I am actually not sure this is the cantaloupe's problem, since the base of the cantaloupe vines don't quite look like the pictures I have seen, but I am watching closely since it could quickly kill the plant.

Some of the cantaloupe leaves are wilted and the stem looks a little weird, but I don't know that I see the frass (sawdust like droppings) described everywhere when discussing squash vine borers.

I thought I was coping with all of these various problems, but then things got worse.


Night-time invaders.  After planting the various bean seeds on Monday morning, I put the white shelving (i.e. makeshift cages) over dirt where the beans had been planted.  They have some fairly wide openings, but I thought they were overkill since I figured everything would be ok until the beans actually sprouted.  I thought they would provide more than enough protection until I could get new chicken wire cages constructed in a day or two.

Monday morning, August 1, with white cages over squares of planted bean seeds

Unfortunately I was wrong.  Tuesday morning was a very sad day.  When I went out to check on things the white wire cages were not moved, but there was a sizeable hole in the location of one of the pole bean seed plantings and multiple seeds scattered along the top of the dirt.  I quickly covered the seeds up with dirt, but I did not have any idea how many of the seeds were still in the ground.   Were they now all eaten except for the three I had found?  Why would predators dig up the seeds and then leave them?  Maybe they only ate some of them?  Even worse was the fact that the white cages were not moved.  It was not a rabbit, oppossum,  raccoon, or armadillo.  Whatever had done this was very small.  It likely had to be a mouse or rat.  What was even more distressing was that either of those might be able to make it through 1 inch chicken wire, which I would prefer to use for cages rather than something with an even finer mesh since I have a lifetime supply of the chicken wire.

It gets worse.  Whatever was roaming around in the garden Monday night apparently did not like the bean seeds, but it did like bell peppers.

What was left of the small bell pepper on Tuesday morning after being chewed on by the night invader.

OK, at least I can try cages made out of chicken wire.  I made two of those and put those over the four bean squares.  I did not know if the critter would be able to make it through the 1 inch openings, but I did not have much to lose at this point.

Tuesday morning with green chicken wire cages over the bean squares.  The red bell pepper is in the center of the pic behind the marigolds.

I went out on Wednesday morning.  There was no evidence of any disturbance under the cages in the bean squares, but another bell pepper was eaten.  I only had one bell pepper left and it was almost ripe (i.e. mostly red) so I went ahead and picked it before the night invader could get it.

By Thursday morning things were beginning to look up a little.  Several of the bean seeds were sprouting...at least not all of them were eaten!  There was no evidence of anything having been inside the cages.  Maybe the chicken wire cages will work after all.

Separate from those issues, the cantaloupe, is growing like mad up the new trellis.  Even if we never get any cantaloupes, at least the plant is making pretty yellow flowers.

Thursday, August 4--the cantaloupe continues to climb rapidly up the trellis

Even more exciting was the unexpected appearance of a hummingbird at the hummingbird feeder.  It was the first one we had seen this year, despite the feeder being out all summer.

First hummingbird of the year

Even better was the fact that he visited the red flowers on the turk's cap plants in the yard, one of the new perennials we added this year with the new backyard landscaping.

Turk's cap plants in our backyard

These were chosen for their potential to attract and feed hummingbirds, so it is good to see the little beasties actually checking out the flowers.  Apparently turk's cap plants are edible for humans, too, but I think I will leave them for the hummingbirds.


Things seemed awfully bleak earlier in the week, but perhaps things are turning around now.   I am cheering for the bean sprouts to sprout and for them to grow without being chewed on by the neighborhood wildlife.