Learning from Last Year's Garden

Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 09:00

I have been looking through last year's pictures of the garden. I thought I might be reminded of lessons learned. Looking at the pictures reminds me just how bad our infestation of earwigs was. In a single night whole plants disappeard. All that would be left were stems or a few veins. This was a cucumber.

Not all vegetables suffered the same fate. Some were not as enjoyable to those nasty night creatures. Time will tell if we will have that same problem this year. I am hoping that since we planted so much earlier we will have a head start on them. I have only seen a few so far. Earwigs are interesting in that the mothers care for their young... I have heard that diatomaceous earth may be useful for fighting earwigs. Supposedly it is too abrasive for them? Don't know why - seems they are wearing head-to-toe armor. Otherwise we have read that rolled up newspaper makes a good trap for them. They hide during the day and feast at night. So, then you pick up the newspaper rolls in the morning and empty all the critters hiding in it's folds into soapy water. We'll see - we'll try anything at this point.

The yellow nutsedge was pretty rampant. It was so discouraging! We tilled and tilled in an effort to combat the weed. But it only took days for the garden to again look like this:

So you can imagine my horror the other day when I discovered that all I had done to to prevent the weed from growing isn't working. If we don't lick this thing this year, I will move the garden to another area. My husband made a valiant attempt to keep the weeds at bay by tilling over and over. I think that eventually breaks down and destroys the soil not to mention the damage to earthworms. This spring we could not find one earthworm in the garden. So far I have found 3 under the newspaper. So, perhaps they are moving back.

This is last year's garden with rows wide enough for the tiller.