Blight in the Garden

Sadly, it looks like blight or some kind of fungus infection has arrived in our garden. All but one of our zucchini plants have white spots all over the leaves. One is covered in a down of white. The tomatoes on that bed - two of them - were so healthy before. They have been looking wilted and listless the last two days. Watering didn't help. I am beginning to think they have blight.

Blight is bad news. They travel. The spores are carried by wind. I'll make an attempt at curbing it tomorrow with a milk treatment (apparently, a diluted 1 to 10 parts solution is a great fungal treatment) and also cutting back of some of the plants. I hope it helps. I'm quite bumped by it. I have been watching the zucchinis closely for two weeks now. But the eggplants and tomatoes is a real bummer. They were just starting to fruit!

I guess this is a rite of passage for any home gardener (or I should say wannabe homesteader): Dealing with diseases and bugs.

Zoe studying my book on plant diseases and insects. She loves the pictures of bugs.

Our eggplant when it still looked relatively healthy. In retrospect, the leaf in the foreground already looks ill.

Daikon Greens

I thinned out some of the daikon I started out from seed a couple of weeks ago. I probably would have thrown the greens into compost bin if mom didn't tell me that they are in fact edible. Come to think of it, why shouldn't they be edible? I stir fried it with garlic and it was quite tasty. I expected it to be peppery, but it tasted slightly like pea shoots plus spinach. I also stir fried some freshly harvested green beans. Dennis and I thought the vegetables really tasty and sweet today.

On edibility, I learned that the nasturtiums are actually edible! We have a lot of them in our garden. I planted them around our zucchinis. They supposedly deter the bugs that love zucchinis (I say it works pretty well, but not completely). And how they grew! I have had to cut them back so that they don't completely choke out the Zucchinis. I think we might have them for dinner tomorrow night. Dennis and I were talking about how we eat a wider variety of vegetables these days, no longer confined to just salad greens, carrots, tomatoes, zucchinis, broccoli, cauliflower, and the occasional cucumber, frozen green beans, peas and packaged beets. I guess that's good!

Garden Growth

It appears that the few strawberry transplants I put into the ground have recovered from the neglect and abuse I put them through. I wasn't sure if they were going to make it since they looked so at the brink of death when I put them in. I'm glad to see them flowering and even fruiting!

I got around to thinning out the Choggia beets I started as seeds some weeks ago. I took out 14 ounce of it and I guess we'll be eating stir-fried beet greens some time this week. It is pretty amazing. The little plot we cultivated is already providing us with so much greens that we really have no need to buy any vegetables from the market anymore.

On a different note, we finally - after more than two months of delay - planted the plum tree yesterday. We had it set on the west side of our property and today I scattered carrot, shiso and lettuce seeds around the tree. I put the carrot seeds further away from the root ball so that they don't disturb the roots of the plum tree.

Challenges Ahead

We are so grateful and happy that our little vegetable pad is doing well - thus far at least. There were instances of suspected fungal issues (which went away after I watered less straight after transplanting and avoided overhead watering), some aphids issue (which we resolved by releasing a whole lot of ladybugs into the garden), and caterpillar issues (which we determined were the bad sort and is currently under control by the use of some neem oil as well as physical removal of the voracious eaters). I am still watching the lemon and blueberry shrubs carefully, which all seem to be malnourished or not quite 100% given their yellowing or disfiguring leaves. For them, I've added iron and sulphur as well as other nutrients. I hope it's not Nematodes or other more serious disease I am not aware of. I've been reading so much trying to figure out what's wrong (and what to do), yet one can never be sure based simply on a few pictures. Just as when Dennis was ill (he is all well again, thank goodness. A case of food poisoning or stomach flu is what we think it is), all his symptoms corresponded to all kinds of illnesses. Same with the plant leaves coloring that I tried to match to pictures I find on the internet. For now, as a matter of expediency (for lack of time), I can only sit back, observe, and hope that I've provided the best possible care already and hope the plants have sufficient reserves to fight back on their own.

Looking ahead, there is so much to do still. Since we didn't grow up with gardening and do not have natural green thumbs (they were heretofore rather black), we embarked on this in a rather academic fashion. That is, we haul loads of gardening books home from the library, I signed up for classes, we research online, take notes.... Part of the challenge is that not only do we want to grow food, we want to do it ecologically, sustainably, and do it beautifully. And did I mention economically yet? In short, not only do we (or I) have to come up with a grand design in terms of uses and look/style, we (or I) have to think about and incorporate all kinds of ecological and biological variables that would make or break the plan.

And there is so much to think about! How to design such that we can have a sustainable garden that invites friendly wildlife, have an area to entertain and have fun with the children, as well as relax and unwind? What would go where?

We say patience. Sit back and observe first the land, how the sun falls, the wind blows, the life that the soil supports (weeds)... however, sometimes, the weeds and the general messiness makes my heart impatient. Still, I'll have to be patient. Bun 2 will be arriving in three months and some and I expect I won't have much time in the immediate months after to do too much planning.

First Harvests

Our little dream is coming true! We are starting to eat from our garden! I harvested a few zucchinis for lunch on Friday (cooked it with tomatoes, garlic, chickpeas and tossed with penne). The zucchinis were still small, around three inches long. But I read that they are good and tender at this stage. Also, I noticed some were hanging low to the ground and I didn't want to rot before we have a chance to get them. Today, I cut a bunch of spinach leaves from the heads we have been growing to go into the miso udon soup we were having for lunch. It made for a nice, light and wholesome lunch.