Garden Day:

Today we made Bug Observation Jars. We mostly caught pests (or "bad") bugs; an earwig, several squash vine borers (also see our blog post "Zucchini Gone Very Wrong!") and an unidentified bug inside a bean (see pictures below).  We looked on http://www.whatsthatbug.com/ to see if we could identify the bean bug, but no luck so far.

We pulled up one poor zucchini plant that had three squash vine borers in its stem. When we pulled the stem apart a couple borers came spilling out. The squash vine borers eat away the inside of the stem interrupting the structures that move nutrients and water through the plant. There is no recovering from this, so the plant must be removed, bagged and put into the trash to reduce the further spread of the pest.

We watered a little, picked a few weeds and some produce. We spotted some bees, flies (not sure if they were beneficial or not as they would not stay still long enough to properly identify) and a butterfly.

We noticed the ears of corn growing and very small pumpkins starting to develop!

Garden Day!

Today we made Bug Observation Jars. Click here for instructions.

 These little jars even make nice sun catchers.

 Today's focus: Beneficial (or "good") bugs!

 Inspecting the pumpkin patch!

 Shadows on a gourd.

 Kara and Clair found an, as of yet, unidentified bean pest. There was some frass (orange stuff) and a hole in the bean. We tore ope the bean and found this little fellow as he crawled out.

 A bean pest crawling out of a wax bean. Frass to the right on the bean.

Kara with some Cherokee wax beans and cucumbers.