Ulog #?: Gardening Adventures... Some Positive News, At Last

After all the setbacks, it looks like my garden is finally taking off. I'm still way behind on everything, but at least this time I can bring you some positive news.

Garden Stress

A little over a week ago, I posted two gardening posts in 2 days.

• My Garden - A Race Against The Clock

• Can You Help Me To Identify This Pest?

The first one was a simple stress-post in which I reported about how far behind I was on everything, the second one was more of a panic-post: an unidentified pest was killing my poor, little plants.

Since those posts, I've been stressing out and working as hard as I could to get rid of the pest and to get everything in the ground.

Neither job is done yet, but I finally made some real, visible progress.

The Pest

After doing a lot of research, I was pretty sure I was dealing with leaf spot disease. But when a friend of mine suggested it could also be thrips, I was completely confused again.

There are so many (organic) ways to fight pests, but almost all of them require you to knów what you're dealing with. And I didn't. I still don't.

After taking a closer look at our apple tree, I noticed there were not only leafrollers on it, it also had leaf curl disease (we took down both our young peach trees because they were so far gone we wouldn't be able to save them) and showed the same problem as all other plants.

Both pictures above show the damage leafrollers are causing.

We have no other choice than to cut back all the branches and hope it will survive.

But seeing the combination of problems on the apple tree gave me an idea. For all I know, there are only 3 organic products that can be used to treat multiple pests: lava rock meal, garlic and neem oil.

I went to work and sprayed the entire garden with a garlic/neem oil/garden soap spray, which was quite a job. A day or two later, I sprayed a thin layer of lava rock meal on all my plants.

So far, it seems to have worked. The number of infected leaves I find goes down every day, there were only 1 or 2 this morning.

I'm not celebrating yet, but there's some hope again.

Planting

Yesterday, I had finally fertilized all raised beds and containers. I was so happy I could start planting everything out.

Still scared that the infection will return, I planted a couple of plants in their permanent spot. I simply could not postpone it anymore, I had to take the risk.

There is still a lot to do, but I'm so happy I finally got some real work done.

I planted the three different kinds of sweet potatoes in a potato bag planter and added a companion plant to each. One has basil growing next to it, the other two have a small bush of thyme to keep them company.

In the bottom left corner, you can see that the melon pear (or sweet pepino) is in his permanent planter too. This is the plant I'm most concerned about and that I'm watching very closely. After all, it ís my favorite, lol. The melon pear fruits are so incredibly delicious, and you can't buy them anywhere here - this means this simply hás to work!

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The Day Lily had not been infected and she's still flowering regularly.
I was so excited to see the first Calendula flowers appear... once another month has passed, my garden will be full of those orange beauties.

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A couple of plants have been growing without being bothered by anything. The pest seemed to have no effect on them.

The gooseberries look so delicious, but their still too young to eat. It's hard to resist them, though.
The wild strawberries we put in the ground because we didn't have any room left last year, are growing slowly. Due to the fact that they are literally on the ground, slugs have been nibbling on them, but no real damage has been done yet.

Our sage plant and parsley plant are growing at warp speed. They look and taste so healthy... it's a real relief to know that at least something will keep on growing.

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That's All, Folks

That's all I have time for today. I will show you some more tomorrow or the day after.

Now I got to run to go see the surgeon and find out where I will be spending my summer: in the garden or in the hospital. Please cross your fingers for me that it will be in the garden.

^{Graphic created with The Logo Creator Software}

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