The Hungry Caterpillar

This week in class we talked all about pests, focusing primarily on insect pests. This is extremely relevant because I've been noticing all of these little (and sometimes not so little) holes appearing in my plant leaves. It looks like we have a few hungry caterpillars in the garden (I actually caught on in the act--see pictures above).

This week was the last week to plant! I gave up on my kohlrabi and put a few cauliflower down instead. I had to replace one of my beet plans as well as a lettuce plant. They looked more than a little sad (I'm afraid that I might have used too much fertilizer last week). I did a fair amount of weeding, as usual, but it wasn't as bad because I visited my garden the Friday before and did some light weeding then, too. No fertilizer this week, which means next week I'll have to do it and be a little more conscious about the amount that I'm using. But I did spray A LOT of neem and BT in light of the many In terms of change, everything seems to be getting HUGE. I spotted two baby eggplants, in addition to more bell peppers (my original pepper is getting huge!). I almost don't recognize the squash and cucumber because of how huge the leaves are. My peas and beans are coming along nicely, although I noticed that something was chomping away at my beans as well.  The few carrots that I do have are looking more promising by the week, but the tomato plants seem to be at sort of a stand-still. I'll have to give them some extra attention on Monday. 

We have a fair amount of insect damages and pressures in the garden right now. I turned over some leaves on Monday and found critters hiding in the shade, in addition to the very large hungry caterpillar making itself comfortable in my tomato plant. We have a variety of pests in the garden, ranging from white flies, ants, aphids, leaf miners, caterpillar, and grasshoppers. Damages are mostly coming in the form of holes in the leaves (chewing and sucking), injury cause by female reproductive eggs, and damage caused by living inside crop leaves or fruits. The pressure then becomes what kind of action we should take to preserve the crops--do we spray something that isn't organic or do we let them get eaten? With this in mind, Libby decided to spray a pesticide that is approved but not organic (a response to the pressure put on our crops by insects). Hopefully the bugs go away!