Showing posts with label pepper plants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pepper plants. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Garden Update

Wow it has been a little while since our last photo update huh? Can you believe how big everything has gotten? It is just crazy! Never in a million years did I think anything like this would have happened. So as a quick up date, all of our tomatoes are growing beautifully. We have finally ascertained that the cherry tomatoes are the ones that died right off the bat. These gorgeous red ones are the Fourth of July tomatoes. We are having them tomorrow on BLT's so I'll let you know how they taste. The banana peppers are doing very nicely also. We harvested the first one already and threw it in chili (we actually didn't know what to do with just one). The other peppers are starting to come in also. There are so many that we are beginning to ask our neighbors if they like peppers :) It would be great to have some to share. These are so cute too I can't wait till they begin to change colors it is going to be a rainbow out there. We had a wicked storm this past weekend with estimated 70 mile per hour winds. Our plants got knocked around quite a bit. Photo Dude had to stake some of them because they had almost come uprooted. Next year we are going to get bigger tomato cages and put the peppers in the smaller ones from this year. The cucumbers are very stubborn. They are not happy just climbing along the fencing they wanted to use the tomato plants to climb on too! Photo Dude ran twine to the back fence for them to run along too. He needs to go out every day to coax them on to it and off the tomatoes. They are very disobedient. This is just one of the yellow squash plants we have going. I never knew they grew like this, they almost look like lilies or something very pretty. I really hope that our neighbors like squash, I've only got so many recipes in my box. Last but not least are the green beans that I don't have a photo of. These are the only plants that we have had a problem with the rabbits getting to! We had cute purple flowers one night and then the next nothing but sad empty stems sticking out of the ground. We aren't pulling them out yet because they keep coming back and if nothing else maybe it is keeping those buggers away from everything else. I guess next year we'll know that rabbits love beans.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Dirty Rotten Slugs!

Last time we weeded we noticed a lot of holes in the leaves of our pepper plants. We couldn't figure out what in the world was eating them. Photo Dude and I went out a few night later around dusk and I noticed that there was a SLUG! on one of the leaves. We had found our culprit. We did a search online to find out how to get rid of these pests without chemicals since we are trying to garden organically. One website suggested to make a trap using a jar with corn meal in it. It seems that the slugs eat the corn meal and it then kills them a bit like a seagull and rice I guess. I don't really want to kill the slugs but I also don't want them in my garden. Photo Dude put together the slug trap and it seems to be really working! We haven't noticed any new holes in our plants since putting it out there. This is a photo of the slug trap. You can see one slug in the jar and another outside in the spilled corn meal. The same website also suggested using buried cups filled 80% full with beer because the slugs are drawn to the liquid and then I think they drown. We have been getting so much rain that this system didn't seem to be a very good one for us. But the idea of drunk squirrels running around could have been hilarious! If you have any suggestions to deter slugs or other garden pests I would love to hear them!