My plants have holes

Some of my plants have holes and weird things are showing up...

White web on the bottom

And one may be "damping off," this is a disease where it starts rotting where the plant meets the soil.  Things are getting real. I noticed the beginning stages of all this a little over a week ago, the holes and a leaning plant (this problem seems to haunt me), but I thought I had time. I got so bogged down in researching treatments that I may have let it take off a bit. I read on the Internet that the culprit could be slugs and that slugs don't like slithering and sliming over pointy things like eggshells, go figure. I brought over a few egg shells after breakfast and had enough to crumble around the affected plants, there weren't that many at the time. I was sort of winging it. I had a feeling it wasn't slugs though, since the plants just didn't seem strong enough to hold the weight of something that big... and stupid. Before I knew it, nearly a week had gone by and suddenly there were a ton of holes and a falling over serrano plant! I sort of panicked and immediately went home and whipped up some of the recipes I had been eyeing for insecticides and fungicides, it was super easy and simple. Of course, I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. One is just Dr. Bronner's soap and water, the other is baking soda and water and soap. Also, apparently cinnamon might help curb the damping off business. We'll see. Hopefully this stuff will show results soon otherwise my garden may be covered in all sorts of spices and weird concoctions by the end of the weekend.

I thinned the plants last weekend too. Thinning is pulling out some of the plants that pop up out of the same spot so they aren't battling for resources. A bunch will come up at one spot because you plant several seeds together (I never knew this!). It is strange pulling plants after having coaxed them above ground. It is a dog eat dog world though. Since I thinned, some of the plants have really shot up. That is how it works, I guess. Making death traps for slugs, growing and then subsequently ripping out the plants you grow, making poisons. You definitely learn to have priorities and develop a thicker skin, and maybe to be more attentive and strategic to avoid some of the plant carnage. Eh.

I had some more lessons this week. Like one, if you connect the hose wrong and it is not sitting quite right and making a screeching sound, just turn off the water first and then fix it. You can not defy physics and manage to reset everything with out getting soaking wet and angry. This is not the first time I have tried this and believe me, save yourself the trouble. It's funny, there was a moment when I was walking back to the garden and noticed the swelling screech that I hesitated and thought "do I go back and turn off the water first or can I make it work and save the trip." Muddy shoes and several curse words later I was squishing back up to the faucet to turn it off anyway.

Two - sometimes you need a book. The idea had crossed my mind but I was just kind of hard pressed to find a reason to commit when I had the wealth of info on the net. The problem is that I was often looking things up after the fact and it was so stressful finding a legitimate source. It was contributing to this frenzied method, re-wording questions a bunch of times to get the right answer and finding ten different pages that all sort of say the same thing but are slightly different enough to make them each seem crucial and important. Then my anniversary with my boyfriend came up and the bad ass read my mind and showed up with a book on organic vegetable gardening.  It includes maps and dates for planting and recipes for pesticides and things. I still use the Internet but it is so nice to just flip to a page, rather than having to strategically search all the time. I definitely feel more at ease.

It's strange. In some ways, gardens move really slowly. There is only so much you can do other than wait. But the slow process is deceiving, it makes it easy for problems to sneak up.  You risk becoming complacent and then all of sudden you have an epidemic on your hands. "Epidemic" maybe an exaggeration but that is what it felt like at first. I was deliriously tired for some reason when we checked on the garden after work the other day too, that didn't help. I need to remember to check on the garden when I am in the right state of mind to have some perspective. There is a weird balance though that I always struggle to find, somewhere between being obsessive and overly attentive, and spacing out, and a garden definitely tests this. It is easy to get burned out when you are swinging between extremes. I think creating a routine will help ensure that I occupy most of my time suspended somewhere in between the two, hopefully right in the middle.

Here's are some photos of the plants' progress in general, it isn't so bad...

Beans

Cucumbers

Cucumbers

Bell pepper

Bell Pepper

Poor Serrano, we tied it to a stick to help it stay up

Okra

Okra

Zucchini

Watermelon

Critter protected tomatoes.

Yellow Squash

Cantalope

In other news, we went to the beach. Here is cool picture of a dog we saw. He was fascinated by the birds and Andrew pointed out that he probably could have just pulled over the chair and gone for them but didn't. What a good dog. Also, while I was standing waist deep in the water I looked down and saw a TURTLE right next to my leg. It immediately took off but we were able to watch it's silhouette in the waves as it swam away. Sometimes you need a trip to the beach. Also, I am growing some tomatoes on my patio and a tiny green tomato showed up this week. Score!