Interesting Month

October has been an interesting month for Farmer Craig and his garden. He has had to deal with many things - some we should have seen coming.

*$^&@)! Dogs
If the title of this section doesn't give you some idea as to what happened, I don't know what will. The day after Craig planted his new berry bushes we went out to water them. Imagine Craig's reaction to see that not just one, but both of his blueberry plants had been uprooted. One of the plants was stripped of all its leaves and lay broken in the center of the yard. The other was just slightly injured and lay next to its now empty hole in the ground.

Immediately we replanted both bushes, however I was less than optimistic that one or both would survive the ordeal. My fear turned into a reality over the next few days. Thankfully, the only plant that was lost was the one that had been dragged around the yard. The other which had sustained only minor injuries has since recovered and is showing new growth.

We replaced the dead plant during the weekend with the same type of blueberry bush. In order to prevent this devastation from happening again, we put up a fence around the bushes. Hopefully this will act as protection until the bushes has established themselves and the dogs are not able to do damage.

Spicy Porch
While we were picking up a new blueberry plant we happened across some new herbs that we did not have in our garden. Craig pointed out that we have very little space, if any, in our garden, so we chose to place them in a planter and set it on the railing of the back porch where they were sure to get a lot of sun.

We planted one tri-color sage plant and one English Thyme plant. We didn't have much room for more than that in this particular window planter. Thus far the two herbs are growing nicely. Especially the thyme. It has already expanded. The tri-color Sage smells good and has grown in height, but not branched out.

Invasion of the Insect Kind
Around the first of the month Craig noticed some small holes in the leaves of some of his plants. After a brief inspection, we assumed that a small bug had gotten in and had lunch one day. The holes were not that big or numerous, so we didn't think anything more about it.

This past Friday we went out to water the garden and low and behold the Broccoli leaves looked as if they were not plants, but swiss cheese. This time we bent down and looked more closely. Lining the stems and underside of the leaves of the broccoli plants (not just one, but 4 of the 5 remaining plants) were small, 1/2 inch, green caterpillars. There had to be at least six per plant, they were everywhere!

We trimmed off the now stripped leaves and left the ones that we not completely demolished. Along with the eaten limbs and leaves we removed the little green plant munchers. We allowed Craig to look closely at them and we took the chance to explain how they eat the leaves to make them strong enough to change into butterflies. His response was "I know mom. I read the book about the hungry, hungry caterpillar." If there was any doubt that kids retain what is read to them, that squashed it. Once the caterpillars were removed we had to take it a step further to prevent their (and other future invaders) from returning.

So, as you can imagine that step was to resort to pesticide. We had hoped to avoid this, but if we didn't want to lose all the broccoli, and potentially all of Farmer Craig's crops, we had to. This is the one part of the gardening that we did not allow Craig to participate in. Even with gloves, my husband and I felt that the risk was too high of him inhaling the poison, getting it in his eyes, or even on his skin. Today we went out and checked the plants. As of right now thy are insect free with no new damage to any of the plants.

Garden Maintenance. 
With the major disasters of the month now behind us it was time to get back into the routine of the garden's care. As with any growing thing, Craig has learned that his garden needs to be cared for. Today he spent the majority of the morning going through his garden on a "weed hunt". We have had the discussion that if the weeds grown in his garden, they will make it almost impossible for the vegetables to grow up healthy.

He also took time to "feed the veggies". It has been at least 2 weeks since all the vegetable has been put into the ground. Some have been in much longer. According to the websites and local extension offices, it is important to fertilize the vegetable between 2-4 weeks after planting. This was done today. Using Miracle Grow Shake & Feed.

Once the fertilize was on the ground, using a hand rake, Craig worked the little granules into the soil. He made sure to wear his gardening gloves, since he knew the food was for the plants only and "not for little boys". He did a great job and worked the soil of the entire garden by himself.

Since the granules needed to be put into the soil when it was dry, we did not water the garden today. We will be sure to do it in the morning before we get moving for the day.