Harvest Part 1

Previous class I learned about the reason why those weeds are so annoying. Weeds dedicate their entire lives to reproducing as much as possible. They out compete other crops and create a very large amount of seeds to propagate themselves. Their seeds can spread through water (rivers and oceans), earth (gravity), fire (forest fire activation), and air (wind). It seems like the Avatar has some competition.

But the time has come. The first harvest of the season!

I was very excited to take this squash home. But I have a small issue. What do you make with squash? Also I have never eaten it before so I have no idea what it tastes like. I guess it will be a surprise. 

In other news, my tomatoes have finally been staked. Hopefully this will make them become more lively.

Plant Products

In the garden I performed the usual routine of weeding and spraying my plants with pesticide. Sadly my eggplants are not in great shape at all.

I watered them and hope that they regain some vitality. But today I discovered the culprit that is behind the holes in my bean plants.

These leaf rollers made their home in my bean plants by..well...rolling up the leaves. Here's hoping that they will be destroyed by a treatment of BT.

In other news, it appears that okra, squash, and eggplant are doing well. The squash is even flowering!

 

Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants all possess fruits that are harvestable while okra yields edible seed pods. Cabbage is harvested for buds, squash for its fruit as well, and radish and beets for their root. I assume cilantro, parsley, and basil are grown for their leaves, and beans are grown for their seeds.

Time Management

It feels like there is so little time in the garden. Most of my time is spent getting rid of the constantly returning weeds. I had to rush to plant both regular and red cabbage in lieu of carrots. I also rushed to fertilize everything, as I hadn't done so in two weeks and I felt that some of the plants were in great need of it. I am greatly concerned that my tomatoes are nearly parallel to the ground now. I attempt to support them against a pile of soil but that does not seem to work. However, squash and okra are coming in nicely. I came back Tuesday to do some more weeding and planted some sunflowers.

My squash is still suffering from white flies. I sprayed them on Monday with neem and performed another treatment Tuesday. Some of my beans seem as though something is consuming their leaves, so I treated that with BT. There are many ways to prevent the spread of pests and diseases. One such is to make the environment less favorable for the pathogen. Another is to use disease resistant crops. These are passive actions. We use active actions in the garden when we spray our plants with neem and BT.