Wednesday, June 03, 2009

First Summer Update!

Over the past week, the garden has been growing extremely fast. Many seedlings, including beets, chard, various lettuces, shallots, and carrots, have sprouted and are looking healthy. Also the turnips, peas, and bok choy are doing extremely well. There are a lot of volunteer zucchini plants all over the garden. And, we have really delicious looking strawberries, some of which are even starting to ripen!


Clearing out the weeds and digging up beds has been keeping me really busy. I have cleared out and dug up almost the entire middle section, and I am almost finished clearing an area to dig an herb garden around the rocks. I have also checked out the seedlings that were started in the greenhouse, and all of the trays look very healthy. Most recently I got the tomatoes and peppers in the ground. I will be getting more plants from the greenhouse in the ground over the next couple of days including more tomato, onions, kale and eggplant.

Flats with very healthy tomato plants, and bean plants in the background


There have been many good and bad bugs flying all around the garden. So far, the only pest that has been any real trouble is the cucumber beetle. Yesterday I spent a long time picking off cucumber beetles and eggs, there were quite a few eating the squash plants.

We have a great crop of radishes, which will be sold to both Catering and the Dining Hall. Also, the word is that honeybee hives will start being moved onto campus tomorrow, which is extremely exciting!

3 comments:

JimCricket said...

Here is a good link from the CT Dept of Ag for Cucumber Beetle control:

http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2823&q=376694

Eli said...

Here is a CT Dept of Ag site that explains methods for dealing with Cucumber beetles.

http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2823&q=376694

Misha M. Johnson said...

Hey Natalie. If you have any questions about pests or anything else send me an email I'd be happy to share my experiences from last summer. I have a doc I put together with images of pests and what I did to manage them that I will send you asap when I return to the US on July 1, but let me know in the meantime if you need any help. I'm so excited to see what's happening.

happy growing.
misha