Garden pics collage

I did a picture scavenger hunt in the gardens to find several things related to our gardening adventure.  Below is the collage I made with the pictures I took.

Flowers and Trellises

      I saw flowers in bloom for the first time in my garden!  The peas and Tomatoes got trellises.

Today I sprayed Neem and BT early on and then weeded.  I put more stakes in the ground so that I could weave string around them for trellises for the peas and tomatoes.  Libby and Matt first did a demonstration on how to do the trellises, which was super helpful.  I went around the wooden stake three times with the string before threading it across.  Eventually I'll probably have to put another level of string higher up, as the plants grow. 

Our plants got sprayed last week, so we won't be able to eat anything from them until November.  Because some of the vegetables will be overripe by November, I ended up harvesting some vegetables that were about ready to harvest (one eggplant, zucchini, and squash and lots of green beans).  By doing this I am freeing up the plant to focus its energy on the new vegetables that I will be able to eat.

Here's a diagram of a basic plant structure
(http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.phschool.com/science/biology_plac)

We learned that each of the vegetables we harvest is not necessary the "fruit" of the plant.
The following are the plants in my garden and what part of the plant we are actually eating/using:

Tomato: fruit
Pepper: fruit
Cabbage: bud
Eggplant: fruit
Squash flower: flower
Carrot:  root
Beet: root
Basil: leaf
Beans: fruit
Peas: fruit
Cucumber: fruit
Squash: fruit
Zucchini: fruit
Okra: fruit
Marigold and Zinnia Flowers: flower
Sunflower seed: seed

I see lots of veggies!

Today was nice and sunny!
I weeded, fertilized, put stakes in the ground for the tomatoes, sprayed with BT and Neem, and made sure the beds were built up. 
Almost everything had changed so much... I saw lots of little vegetables!
There were squash, zucchini, cucumber, beans, green pepper, eggplant, and more tomatoes.

 

I saw lots of caterpillars and leaves that did not look too good.  It is very evident that there are pests in my garden.  Insect pests such as whiteflies, aphids, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and leaf miners are in my garden. 

The caterpillars have chewed the leaves.  They are very clever; they chew a section that can then fold over like a little tent for them to keep them shaded and in a moist and safe place.  The white flies and aphids have sucked the nutrients out of the leaves.  Plant virus diseases are caused by the whiteflies and aphids.  They have tube shaped mouth parts that extend into the plant.The whiteflies have left my squash plants with silver leaves.  The leaf miners live in the tissue of the leaf and fruit flies cause damage by living inside crop leaves...the larvae feeds on the leaf.  

Thankfully we do have taken measures to reduce and eliminate the amount of pests in our gardens.  The gardens were plowed and we weed consistently.  We've also used insecticides, such as BT (Thuricide) and Neem.  The organic insecticides aren't as fast at killing the pests as the non-organic insecticides, such as Admire.  Admire Pro, a non-organic insecticide, was sprayed on our gardens yesterday.  

 

Cabbage and Beets!

 It started to rain while we were out in the garden...so we left a little early.  I didn't get everything done, but prioritized to plant my cabbage and beet transplants and fertilize them and most of my tomatoes.  

                 Cabbage and beet transplants!  

There were flowers on my tomato plants, eggplant, and bush bean plant.
I saw one little green tomato, too!

 All of my plants were much taller and the stems of my tomato, zucchini, squash, and cucumber
plants were noticeably more spread out.  I think the plants' diameters doubled since last week!

                         

My carrots are barely peaking through and I haven't seen my herbs yet.  Nothing has died, thankfully.

I'm excited to be able to soon have vegetables to take home and eat.  It will be so nice to be eating vegetables that were grown in my own garden :)
 

I eat pretty healthy; not much of my food is processed.  I got all my groceries at Winn-Dixie this week.  (The food from Winn-Dixie is distributed from the Winn-Dixie in Jacksonville, Florida.)   It's only about 1/2 mile from where I live, so I bike there if I can't get to Ward's, Publix, or Save-a-Lot. 

Some of my staple foods are: 
-Eggs
-Plain yogurt
-Oatmeal
-Carrots
-Rice
-Eggplant, grown in USA
-Bananas, grown in Honduras

It's looking very green :)

It was so exciting to see my garden today!  There was so much green!
I got down on my hands and knees and weeded...despite it now being fall, it was probably the hottest day yet out in the garden .  Then I took a hoe and loosened the soil in the walkways so that I could build up the beds of soil better.   I love how "tidy" it looks now!

Every other week I will fertilize the plants...did it last week!  I did apply Thuricide (BT) to the leaves of the eggplant, peppers, and beans to keep caterpillars away.  And I applied Neem to the leaves of cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes to keep small flies and aphids away.

The carrots are the only seeds that haven't germinated yet, so I replanted those.
The tomatoes are taller (maybe even 6 inches taller than last week!) and fuller.  They leaves are a dark green color, which I think means they are pretty healthy!  I saw a flower on one of the tomato plants!   

The pepper plants are taller and look healthier than last week.  The zucchini, squash, and cucumber are so much bigger; I'm glad I spaced them like I did and not any closer to each other!  They each have lots of big, healthy leaves.   My okra plants are above ground now; they each have  a little stem with two leaves.  You could see little green sugar snap pea plants peaking through the soil...next week I should be able to see the stems.  My bean plants are taller, fuller, and a rich green healthy-looking color.  They are pretty close together, so I might have to thin out that area.

The sunflower plants are huge!  No buds yet, but they look really healthy.  The marigolds and zinnias are growing at a slow and steady pace.  

We discussed  plant nutrients during lecture.  There are three different of categories of essential (we need ALL of them) nutients.
Environmental: Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (make up 95% of soil)
Macronutients: Nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and sulfur
Micronutrients (just need small amounts): Iron, zinc, chlorine, copper, boron, maganase, sodium, nickel, molybdenum, and sulfur

There are different "hunger signs" that indicate that there is some lacking of a specific nutrient.
Some of my tomato plants had lower leaves that were yellow, which indicates a deficiency in nitrogen. 

The optimal pH for soil is 6.5.  Our soil is 7.5, which is still ok.
*An interesting concept I learned is that there isn't growth in a plant just because the nutrient content in soil is high...the nutrient content needs to be AVAILABLE in the soil!

                                                                          Eggplant

                                                                           Zucchini

                                                                         Zinnia Flowers

                                                                          Sunflowers

                                                                        Bush Beans

                                                                          Okra
                                             

                                                         Sugar Snap Peas (above and below)