Garden Nemeses

So far, everything has been growing relatively well. Fortunately, the tomatoes are doing much better than last year, thanks to the raised beds and drier weather. Peppers, eggplant, cukes, squash, melons, field peas, and kale are all doing very well also. So far we've harvested several crops of peas (which have recently been pulled up and their bed planted with corn/squash/beans), a couple pounds of potatoes (though most of them are still in the ground), a ton of basil, some amazing carrots and beets, a number of undersized onions, and some cabbage. We've also got okra seedlings from seeds we saved last year that are doing very well. Overall, a fairly successful spring.



Despite these successes, there have been some failures. Unfortunately the biggest of which has been beans. This is surprising considering how well they did last year. At present they are particularly suffering from two afflictions: 1) root rot, and 2) bean leaf beetles:

These little bastards chew countless holes in the bean leaves, eventually causing the plant to be stunted in growth and diminished in productivity. The only positive is that they don't actually chew on the developing beans. That pleasure is reserved for these asses: