Not only are the wintersown velvetleaf and wild carrot blooming on my balcony, but so are the ever-reliable marigold and bacopa.
Marigolds
Bacopa
The heat is causing the sacred and Thai basils to bolt. The cinnamon-candy smell of the Thai variety when you brush your hand over the plants is heavenly. I'm not sure, though, whether to let them bloom or to clip off the flowering stalk.
Sacred (Tulsi) basil
Thai basil
'Alaska' and 'Tom Thumb' (or is that 'Empress of India'?) nasturtiums are blooming for the first time this season.
Nasturtium 'Tom Thumb' or 'Empress of India'
Nasturtium 'Alaska'
The bumblebees love the lavender, but are a little camera-shy.
Bee and lavender
And this bug apparently likes chomping off the Shasta daisy buds :(
Bug on Shasta daisy
Shasta daisy with amputated flower bud. The guilty party lurks in the background.
All is not lost though, as some of the buds were spared, giving the first flowers of the season. What a pleasant surprise; I was told that Shasta daisies don't bloom until their second year.
Shasta daisy
And anyway, most of the bugs (even the wasps!) in the garden have been very friendly.
Ladybug
I think that the beefsteak and red pear tomatoes have more or less done flowering for the season and are busy setting fruit, but there's still sparse fruit on the White Queen plant, but it's determinedly playing catchup. No pun intended.
White Queen tomato
And finally, a promising sign for August's bloom day.
Last week, among the chives, I found this little guy hiding. There are also bumblebees everywhere in the neighbourhood, and monarch butterflies are not far behind. I suppose I ought to start planting my seedlings out soon.
There's still snow on the ground and my seedlings and young plants have been beset by a nefarious plague.
Remember the good old days when chez Dirt Gently's was a sea of green and the only worry was a spot of unsightly fluffy white fungus? Oh, how good it was to be blissfully innocent!
It seems that the plants in the propagation and germination station have been overrun with leafhoppers turning the propagation and germination station into a miniature version of Klendathu. Sadly, my foes weren't even the cool-looking multi-coloured ones (leafhoppers, that is, not arachnids). Instead, these guys:
Know your foe: Leafhopper
The little buggers laid waste to the jalapeno peppers, bacopa, cape daisies, moonflowers and bok choi. Thankfully, the datura and spinach have been spared; while I've found a few bugs on these young plants, they have mostly been undamaged.
The field of battle
The adult and young bugs suck the juice from the undersides of leaves, leaving behind a payload of toxic saliva that causes leaf burn, "windowpanes" in the leaves where they feasted and, in young shoots, causes leaf distortion.
Broken windowpanes
A little crooked
Leafhoppers especially like to hang out along thick veins on the underside of leaves, on the apical meristem where they'll royally mess up your new growth, in the crotches between the main stem and petioles on my bok choi, and at and just below the crown. Basically, if it's a hard to get at area, leafhoppers live there.
Is a live and let live policy preferable to war with the bugs? Maybe, if I could rely on predator insects to knock these little bastards off. But it's much too cold for the bugs that like to eat 'em to be very active.
I applied neem oil to the tops and bottoms of the leaves as thoroughly as I could, and spent considerable time daily manually squashing the bugs, but my efforts appeared to be futile. As a last resort, I drenched with insecticidal soap. This burned the plants and left holes in the leaves where there once were "windowpanes."
I've quarantined these plants again, leaving the germination station rather bare. I'm debating destroying the affected plants as I can't seem to get rid of the bugs, and two flats of newly germinated seedlings to protect. The other alternative is to leave the plants outside for a day, hoping that the cold kills off the bugs but not the plants. What do you think?
I discovered these guys while taking care of my light garden. Looks like they're munching away at the surface of the leaves of my moonflower seedling (the one that turned purple) and potato vine cuttings. I'm pretty sure they originated with the moonflower seedling. Do I have a problem? Should I be reaching for the neem oil? Are the guys in the fourth picture baby versions of the ones in the first three?
In other news, The Dirt Gently Nursery for Slightly Fungus-ridden Toilet Paper Rolls has been integrated into the germination and propagation station. Behold!
In the three big pots on the bottom shelf are bok choy, spinach, and carrots that I'm hoping to harvest after growing them completely indoors.
