Bugs

How many bugs can a small garden have?
Last month, it was the Red Lily Leaf Beetle. They were having a buffet party on my poor lily plants every morning. So, I had to get up early, and catch then by hand. They look pretty, but man, they eat like pigs. There were holes in my lily's young leaves, some of them got 80% eatten! And they lay eggs on the under side of the leaves, so I have to kill those as well. Don't really like to smash the bugs, I like to use my nails to pull their little head off! (Muwhahaha, that's my evil laugh!)

Then after I transplanted my cucumber, celtuce, and eggplant seedlings, it was the slugs, eating them away during the night. We don't drink at all, so cannot use the beer bait method. Besides, that might attract all the slugs from my neighbors' yard over. And since I am not using any chemical in my garden, had to find organic ways to keep them away. So far, I found crashed eggshell works pretty good. Just hope the weather stays warm, so my baby vegetables can grow bigger faster. Oh, now, the slugs found another tasty food source, my strawberry! I have to pick them before they fully ripe, otherwise, the slugs will eat at least half of the berries. So annoying!

This weekend, I found some snails, eating my purple coneflower leaves! This is the first time I found them in my garden, heard they are pretty bad too. Need to do more research on this topic. My purple coneflowers are really strong, so I am not worried about them. Just don't know what else in my garden will be the snails' next victim.

But this is my worst enemy ever! The Cucumber Beetle! There are two different type, striped and spotted. They both look cute, but they are just equally evil! They attacted my cucumber, wintermelon, squash, and anything else has yellow flowers! It's not their bites hurt the plants, they spread the bacterial wilt disease. During the past 2 years, I lost most of my cucumber plants to these devils. So far, haven't found a single one, but one of my cucumber seedlings had a wilted leaf a week ago. Pinched it off, but it still doesn't look so good. It might be the beetle's work. It's so frustrating.

But I am still NOT going to use any chemicals on my vegetable and flowers. I don't want to accidentally kill the good bugs and the birds. Most importantly, I am not going to poison my own family with those stuffs. I might lose some plants or harvest to the bugs, but at least I know for sure what I put on my dining table will be 100% organic. In fact, we should all stop using chemicals in our yard, so our poor earth will have a fighting chance.