Planting Tomatoes. Photo: Theresa Diaz

May 9th and 16th,

During our May 9th Garden Group, we planted tomatoes in the hoop house.  These were from seeds that were started indoors under fluorescent lights and subsequently transplanted to larger containers and hardened off by Michele at her home.  The hoop house will hopefully extend the growing season well into the fall.

The trellises that we made earlier were positioned over a bed that contained peas and tied to stakes to prevent them from blowing over.

For our May 16th Garden Group, thanks to Bjorn's generosity, we planted more tomato plants and other plants he donated from his garden.  Bjorn, a professional painter, has also offered to paint the hoop house sometime during the next week (provided that it stops raining!)  so that Garden Group will be able to paint flowers on it during our party next week!  Thanks Bjorn!

Garden Group spent most of the meeting pulling out weeds and generally cleaning up the front flower beds on either side of the sidewalk leading into the school.  Not an easy job with all the tough weeds growing in the beds.  A big thank you to parent volunteers Theresa and Andrea!

We also harvested our lettuces.  It was really great to see the kids grab bunches of the freshly picked and washed lettuces and eat it happily.  Hopefully we'll see more of that at the dinner table.

I gave a short talk about good and bad insects in the garden, as a precursor to our ladybug release on the last day of Garden Group.  Although lady bug larvae don't look anything like their cute adult counterpart, they have a much more voracious appetite for aphids than the adults. Kind of like teenagers.  I also relied heavily on Shimon Steinberg's fascinating TED lecture, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/shimon_steinberg_natural_pest_control_using_bugs.html
to show how parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside aphids to use them as a source of food for the developing larvae.  Gross, but ingenious.  I will give a bug talk to Mrs. Lockhart's 2nd grade class this Friday. Thankfully this will be it with bugs for awhile as all the close ups of centipedes, millipedes and mummified aphids that I have been printing out on my computer is giving me the creeps.

Biological control of pests using insects is great but since we all don't have access to a ready supply of predatory mites, parasitic wasps and lady bugs, another pesticide free alternative is to use home remedies.

Here are some that I found in the magazine Fine Gardening (July/August 2005).

Home Remedies for removing Insect Pests        

Tricks for removing aphids, mites and other small insects;

1. Dislodge with a blast of water (Scientist at Texas A&M Univ. estimate that up to 90% of these insects can be removed this way!)
2. Adhesive tape

For aphids:

Fill a yellow dish with soapy water near the plant.

Aphids are attracted to the color yellow.

For Spider mites:

Combine ¼ cup of buttermilk with 2 cups of wheat flour in 2 ½ gallons of water.

    Mix thoroughly and put in a spray bottle and spray on plants.  This mixture suffocates the  mites.

To protect plants in the cabbage family (broccoli, cauliflower, kale etc.)

Mix 2 Tbsp of red-pepper powder and 6 drops of liquid soap in 1 gallon of water.

Let the mixture sit overnight, and stir well.  Put in a spray bottle and spray weekly on the tops and bottoms of leaves.


Enjoy!