Harlequin bugs doin' it in our collards

We stopped by the Druid Hill garden yesterday to take a look and found most of our cold weather crops are done done done for the year. No big surprise there. What was surprising, however, was the massive number of crazy little black and orange bugs covering our collards. After we ripped out the plants, the ground was actually writhing with them. A quick look on the Md Extension website and now we have a name for the little creeps: Harlequin bugs. (E visited the garden today and said, "There's a Harlequin bug orgy in our kale.") And because we can, I offer you a picture of Harlequin bugs mating.
Other exciting things from the Druid Hill garden: For the first time ever, we have successfully(ish) done broccoli and cabbage. E brought home about 3 heads of broccoli a few weeks ago, which he later steamed to perfection. Yesterday we found three heads of cabbage too. Small, sure, barely worth picking perhaps, but still three, count 'em, three cabbages! Next year we'll have to try to get them in a little sooner than mid-April and maybe we'll have a respectable harvest.
The Fox St. garden looks like pure death: the peas have all died back, not surprising given that it's been in the 90s for the last couple weeks. The potatoes and shallots are also giving up the ghost. For these, at least, you aren't supposed to harvest them until a few weeks after the plants have died back, so at least things look all a mess on purpose. Still, we were getting impatient and pulled up a couple plants to see how they're doing. The shallots look great -- it's amazing how much one clove? segment? can generate. Not great bunching, but they're coming along! And the potatoes, oh the potatoes. More fun to dig up than I can possibly tell you. Unfortunately we used a big shovel, a trowel not being handy, and severed quite a few of them. Some are still pretty small, so a few weeks more might do well for them too, but it was extremely fulfilling to yank those out of the ground. I guess we can look forward to some sort of potato and egg dishes in the future.( I think these are the purple vikings.)


Reminders:
- Broccoli and Cabbage Transplants from Meyer Seed are great and cheap
- Get moving in March, lazy bones!
- Use a trowel for potatoes.

Spring gardening

This year we have three garden plots: the long bed in the backyard (maybe 20'x4'), a private plot in the Fox St. community garden (oh, let's say 15'x4'), and after almost two years on a waiting list, a bed in the city garden at Druid Hill Park (a whopping 15'x10'). This gives us a grand total of almost 300 sq.ft., just you know, spread out a bit. Come to think of it, we are also sharing some space at Mavid's too (home to some revolting number of peas and beets at the moment). So four. Four gardens. Seems excessive, but more would be fun.

In preparation for all of this space, we splurged on seeds from Landreth's, including at least four kinds of tomato, and three types of beans, three or four types of squash, three types of cucumber (who knew there were so many?), several eggplant varieties, and a bunch of other stuff. We were generally successful with germination (thanks to E), although I think a few things just simply failed. Many of our seedlings have been transplanted, but there are others still growing and waiting for cold-weather crops to come and free up a little room.

The home garden: So far we have mostly summer crops in there -- a couple cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, eggplants, peppers, maybe a few other things. Basil, cilantro, and borage all seem to be doing well on the front porch, and we have so much mint right now that mojitos are definitely going to have to happen soon. (Pics will come eventually)

The Fox Street garden: Peas! Potatoes! Onions! This garden gets the ugly stuff (or at least, the stuff that grows underground or is not colorful enough to be attractive to the neighbors). Last year a lot of people lost their tomatoes and other common vegetables to casual pickers, and the kids pulled up all our carrots, presumably to see if they were done yet. The peas are going strong and I think we'll have a bunch of those within a week. The potatoes have been crazy, but I will leave that until I have a photo of them to share. Fun stuff though.



The Druid Hill garden: As I said above, this is mostly full of cold-weather crops at the moment. Unfortunately something awful ate all of our peas, so they never really made it above three inches. (We ripped those out and did beans instead.) Otherwise we have a couple types of lettuce going, radishes, broccoli and cabbage that will probably do nothing, beets, and chard. Maybe some collards too. We lost our arugula, broccoli rabe, and bok choy after a few warm days when they bolted. Ah well. At least the chickens enjoyed them. We've begun transplanting some summer stuff in the barer spots in this garden too, with more to follow soon.