So, we may have told you that Scott is using a childrens' swimming pool as a container for his sunchokes (back) and two zucchini plants (front). This photo was taken the first or second week of April.
These little sunchoke babies resemble weeds. And that, my friends, is why we opted to place these guys in the backyard away from the judgy HOA eyes. They are already on my case about leaving the garbage can out over the weekend so we're not taking any chances.
We found it interesting that each zucchini plant (Costata Romanesco) had different leaves. You can see that this plant below has some deeper lobes (if that's the right term):
And the plant below has more shallow lobing:
They came from the same box of seeds so we're not sure why we got different leaves on each plant.
Here is the swimming pool today. As you can see, the plant with shallower lobes is ginormous. The other squash plant was trucking along until a few days ago when the leaves mysteriously started to wilt and fall to one side. Scott thought it was wind damage at first but I smelled a rat (figuratively).
Here are pictures of some of the leaves:
Yeah, they are pretty sad looking. Pests 1-Humans 0. Scott thinks it may be a type of vine borer, not bacterial wilt because when he cut into the stem it did not have a gooey ooze (which is characteristic of bacterial wilt). The leaves were affected one section at a time, rather than all at once. It appears that there is a big hole in the base of the vine. So even though it's a little early for vine borers, we think they are the culprit.
I just learned about vine borers but they sound pretty evil...
I just learned about vine borers but they sound pretty evil...
Frickin' vine borers...
but the blossoms on the healthy plant look great:
So pretty and twirly. I wish they lasted longer. It's nice to get to capture them with the camera.
A couple of our tomatoes died. We think it was murder.
We have this ant problem in the kitchen (which motivates me to keep the kitchen counter clean). They will leave our kitchen alone for a while and then come back when we're not paying attention. One day, they found our baby plants on the hutch and decided to make a little nest in the soil roots of the plants. It took us a few days to realize what was going on, and then we sprayed them immediately. I suspect that they chewed on the roots of the tomatoes and when we transplanted them last week, they just didn't have it in them to keep on living.
Since I took this picture yesterday, another tomato in the raised bed has fallen victim to this mysterious pest. We may have to start growing spare tomato babies.
On a lighter note, I transplanted my basil in the raised beds. They had really healthy looking leaves and roots. Our soil is rich and rather sandy. I have never worked in sandy soils before. Most of my soil experience has been with obstinate rocky clay. We're hoping that our plants will love the sunny weather projected this next week!
A couple of our tomatoes died. We think it was murder.
We have this ant problem in the kitchen (which motivates me to keep the kitchen counter clean). They will leave our kitchen alone for a while and then come back when we're not paying attention. One day, they found our baby plants on the hutch and decided to make a little nest in the soil roots of the plants. It took us a few days to realize what was going on, and then we sprayed them immediately. I suspect that they chewed on the roots of the tomatoes and when we transplanted them last week, they just didn't have it in them to keep on living.
Since I took this picture yesterday, another tomato in the raised bed has fallen victim to this mysterious pest. We may have to start growing spare tomato babies.
On a lighter note, I transplanted my basil in the raised beds. They had really healthy looking leaves and roots. Our soil is rich and rather sandy. I have never worked in sandy soils before. Most of my soil experience has been with obstinate rocky clay. We're hoping that our plants will love the sunny weather projected this next week!
