Bug problem

Somehow we are getting some leaf-eating bugs in the Grow Camp. Might be tiny aphids, which I've seen, or we might have something else like worms. They might have come in while we were working, snuck in through the screens or they might have came in with the new bean plants we got at a local greenhouse. I did find one tomato moth caterpillar and promptly removed it a couple weeks ago. Regardless they seem to be attacking the new bean plants the most.

They are also chowing on the squash and tomatoes a little.

This happened just today so it cannot go unchecked as we've seen plants get eaten in just a couple days before. So I sprayed lightly with some Ortho that has worked well in the past.

Bugs happen. Especially around here. We've lost many plants to them until we started researching and using some of the insecticides available.

Check out the growth in just the last 3 days. The squash leaves are pushing on the screens!

1 week later

I just harvested a bunch of radishes, dill, chives and we've been munching on strawberries as they ripen.
Been in the mid 80's and sunny all week so everything is growing like crazy.

We moved many of the tomatoes over to pots on the porch so they don't overcrowd in the Grow Camp.

Warm weather and added a sprinkler system

All of the sudden our weather is in the 80°s and sunny!  The warm weather is great but it's going to get dry in no time so I made a sprinkler system for the garden that runs via automatic water valve.

I initially set it to water at 7am and 6pm for 20 minutes each. This is subject to change depending on our weather and how dry the soil feels after a couple days.
This uses 1/4" OD nylon tubing with 5 little Rainbird sprinkler heads.

It runs up the side and then down into the A frame bracket, which I loosened up a little.

Then the hose is zip-tied to the support bar running the length of the Grow Camp.

Here's a video of it in action.

Because the soil is so chunky (we had to break up a lot of it by hand) I decided to add some earth worms to help break it down. 60 to be exact. They should be very happy in there.

And here is a growth progress update. My Sharpie tags are fading miserably, but by now we pretty much know what is what in there.

Next post should show a lot more growth due to the temperatures finally warming up.

More seedlings

We've had a lot of morning frost this week so we seal up the covers every night and open it back up in the morning. On Friday we warmed up to 70° with a lot of rain so we left the covers rolled up loosely. The next day the covers were full of water (both my foot and our little dog who was right next my feet got soaked discovering this!) so I decided to start rolling them up by rolling them under rather than over so there is no way they can capture water.

Saturday we planted another tray of seedlings and made up some tags.

I made the tags from some plastic post cards and then wrote on them with Sharpies. These are Danvers 126 carrots.

Peas have a lattice to climb up on. We have a combo of Alaska wilt-resistant and Sugar Sprint.

Black-seeded Simpson loose head Lettuce. These are from 10 year old seeds and we usually only get one strong plant from them. But one plant produces plenty and they grow to about 2 feet tall. I got many sprouts this year and only put 4 in the Grow Camp. I'll plant the rest in pots. If these guys take off we will be giving away a LOT of lettuce!

We have 3 different kinds of radish...
White Icicle.
Beauty Mix.
Sparkler White Tip.

We've never had any luck growing Cantaloupe and there's only 3 seedlings, so we'll see if the Grow Camp improves our luck.

Strawberries. We bought these from a local greenhouse, they are doing very well.

We have a variety of herbs.

Four different kinds of tomatoes. 

Big boy hybrid.

Steak sandwich hybrid.

Moneymaker.

2 different kinds of Cherry.

This is Dackel, our 3 month old puppy snoozing in the sun (and possibly still drying off!).

We still have one more tray to plant which is mostly herbs that are slow starters. I also have many hot peppers started but I think I'm going to plant all of those in pots. The Grow Camp is likely going to be too crowded for them, and they like a lot of space.

Our neighbors are pretty impressed with this system. If these all take off as expected we will be giving them some extras... we can only eat so much. ;)