Early October 2015 Update

Its early October (Oct 3rd today) , and today the weather is pretty much perfect... Sunny skies, 80 degree high, and low humidity.   The past few weeks the temperature has hovered around 90 degrees, and its been pretty dry, so I've had to keep on watering manually.

Cool Weather Plants

Right in between the Okra plants and the cymlings/yellow squash plants, I expanded yet another area, and put in some cabbage (Ferry's Round Dutch) and some spinach (from saved seeds in the spring) seedlings.  I had to pull out a few of the okra plants to make more room.  We had started the plants from seed a few weeks before, and put them in.  I seem to have a lot of problem with "dropping off" with seedlings in pots.  I am not sure why, but I lost many of the spinach.  I also sowed some spinach seed directly in that same area too, and those are starting to come up.

cabbage and spinach seedlings

I have noticed some tiny holes in my cabbage plants, and found some tiny caterpillars starting to feed on them, so I sprayed them with BT the other day.  As the pumpkins keep growing, I am going to have to keep them from growing over this area and taking over.   In the meantime I started another batch of spinach, cabbage, and turnips in small pots.  I may plant these in areas where the pumpkin and hubbard squash vines have died back.

Beans

kentucky wonder pole beans have reached the top of the fence.

Earlier in the summer I had done some bush beans, and I did those because they grow faster, and I wanted some beans before the really hot weather came.  They did ok, but we didn't really get a chance to get a lot of bean from those plants.  I usually prefer pole beans, because they grow vertically, take less space, and they produce a lot.  But they are even less tolerant of very hot weather.  Last year in the early fall I planted some but it was too late.  Just when they started producing well, we had a hard freeze.  This year I started quite a bit earlier.  They are doing very well now.  I can see they are starting to produce flowers now.   I have two areas in the garden with pole beans.  I am using twine to train them up towards the trellis I made for the birdhouse gourds, and on the other are, towards the trellis I made for the cucumbers which are all dead now.

Okra

We have had so much okra, we're kind of tired of it now.  I had frozen some and we've eaten them in many ways.  I have not picked much recently, so many of the pods are now mature. I collected a few for seeds for next year. 

Okra plants with mature pods

I thinned out a few plants a few weeks ago to make space for fall plantings.  Next year I need to grow less of these, because the 7 or so plants we had were too much, and they took over a lot of space, and tend to shade out other plants. They became like trees, and it was hard to keep up with them.  The plants did amazing though. They had no pest problems (Aphids had been a problem in the past years).  Next year I should only do 4 plants, I think.  

Birdhouse Gourds

The birdhouse gourd plants are still hanging on.  They have produces a lot of gourds.  I think there are probably about 20 of them out there of varying shapes and sizes.  Its cool that their shapes vary so much. 

My plan is to let most of these dry on the vines.   

birdhouse gourds maturing

 The plants have been hit throughout the late summer with a huge infestation of aphids (more below) and also powdery mildew.  These plants are very susceptible to powdery mildew.  Also cucumber beetles like them a lot too.  But the plants grow so quickly, they just keep going despite it. Much of the earlier growth has died due to the mildew and pests, but there are plenty of areas that are still growing.

much of the vines are dying but there is new growth too

gourd leaves heavily infested with powdery mildew

I have not done much about the powdery mildew on these plants, because there is just so much of it, its out of control.  But since I have so many gourds now, I'm not that concerned about it anymore.

Aphid Wars

This year I had a major aphid explosion in my garden.  The war started on the birdhouse gourds.  I noticed some of the leaves were getting heavily infested in mid-summer, but I didnt do much about it because I started to notice a few ladybug larva on them. 

birdhouse gourds, with lots of aphids, and ladybug larva feeding on them

Over time the aphids starting expanding their area, being helped by lots of ants that protect and move them around.    But the ladybug population started growing too.   The aphids then started moving onto the squash.  I mentioned last post that my yellow squash and cymlings that were covered in netting were starting to get attacked.  Well it got very bad.  Many of the leaves were becoming severely stunted and curled.  I took off the covers,and starting moving a lot of the ladybug larvae from the gourd plants over to the squash.  Also I stared spraying the aphids off of leaves with water.  

Other help started to arrive.  I've been noticing many hover-flies around, and their larva. (info here) They look like tiny caterpillars but are actually maggots that feed on aphids.  I've seen lots of them on my squash.  Also lacewings and their aphid-lion larvae showed up too (info here), I see lots of their eggs.  And the the parasitic wasps that attack aphids and make them "zombies" started showing up too.  I know because I see some zombie (or mummy) aphids around, which are infested with larval wasps, and become brown and bloated, and then shortly die. (info here) So on the squash plants the aphids are finally under control.  The birdhouse gourds still have them but in much less numbers, and I see plenty of their predators around.  

Squash/Pumpkins

The hubbard squash plants keep growing pretty quickly and expanding towards the other side or the garden.  The original hill area is pretty much all cleared now as all the older leaves have died, accelerated  probably by the powdery mildew and aphids too.

 But there is plenty of new growth going on, and much of it is behind the area where the okra is, around the old cucumber trellis.

 Last week I finally had a good female flower open and set fruit.  Here is a Hubbard squash, about 5 days old.  I put a metal sheet underneath it so it doesn't sit on the ground and rot, as it grows bigger.  These things get huge!  I'm really hoping this becomes a nice one.  But I have had no other good female flowers yet.  I grew these a couple years ago, and only got 1 real good squash too.

I have really not seen any squash vine borer eggs in at least a week.  They seemed to have slowed down a lot by mid-september. I did kill a moth about two weeks ago.    I have quit burying new vines, because I think the threat of them is pretty much over.   

Summer Squash

Since my last update, I completely removed the covers from the "cymlings" (Patty pan squash) and the yellow crookneck.  As I mentioned above they were severely infested with aphids, but are now under control.  Also powdery mildew has gotten on them, and I started spraying with baking soda, and I ordered Potassium bicarbonate to spray on them too, to keep it at bay.  I have not seen any Squash borer damage on these plants yet, and with their recent decline, dont anticipate that will be a problem anymore this year.  I mentioned last post about buying Tricogramma wasps to help control them. I did release some of them, but its really hard to tell if they had any effect.  Hopefully they helped.    

Benning's Green Tint variety of Patty Pan (called Cymlings in the old days)

some leaves have powdery mildew, some are curled due to aphid damage

very cool "flying saucer" shape of these squash

yellow crookneck squash almost ready

I've picked some squash already, both cymlings and yellow squash, and there is much more on the way, despite the aphids and PM (powdery mildew).

Spaghetti Squash and Sugar Pie Pumpkins

I planted these really too crowded together, and was not able to adequately tend them.  The original hills are looking pretty bad right now, but some of the vines have expanded pretty far, past the peppers, and now meeting up with the Hubbard vines in the middle.  I can see a lot of SVB damage in the are, but its so crowded in there I cant really step in there.  I think there were many eggs laid there, (probably before I release the tricogramma wasps). 

pumpkins and spaghetti squash vines have grown through the pepper plants.

  My first spaghetti squash that was growing up the fence died, due to SVB damage on the vine. But the growing tip of the vine has reached the cucumber area, and that seems to be doing well (having rooted along the ground in various places). Here is a spaghetti squash fruit that set a few days ago, and seems to be doing well.  But that is the only one so far.

The sugar pie pumpkins have fared a bit better.  They have much thicker vines, and can resist SVB damage better it seems. The spaghetti squash vines are much thinner, similar to acorn squash vines.  So far I have two pumpkins growing.  The one below is one that recently set.  Its under the old cucumber trellis.

 Much closer to the original hill, I have one pumpkin that set about 3 or so weeks ago, and seems to be starting to turn orange now.  As you can see many of the leaves in that area are dying now.

Peppers

The peppers have been doing great.  Tons of pepper on them.  I have recently seen a number of leaf-footed bugs on them, and have tried to hand-pick them off.  I am not sure what damage they have caused, except maybe a few wilted peppers, but with so many, I have really not cared too much.