Prosthetic Conscience

That’s not a white tornado!

Apparently some kind of dust devil or mini-tornado swept through our garden, yesterday, knocking down the tomato plants, cages and all. This did quite a bit of damage to the plants, and we had a bit of a struggle getting the cages back up. It looks like they will be okay, now, though we’re still not sure what the final toll will be. At least we got a tasty dinner of green tomato chili out of it.

Also, all our pumpkins are dead, killed by squash vine borer. Thankfully, our butternut squash are unaffected; apparently they are less vulnerable. This might be because they put down so many secondary roots that even when they get infested, the insect doesn’t harm them much.

We also discovered that our tomatoes have a few tomato hornworms. On the one hand, they are rather pretty, and grow up into the good-looking five-spotted hawk moth. On the other hand, they eat tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. On the gripping hand, they are infected with larvae of a braconid wasp, which just goes to show that the entire class Insecta is not out to destroy our garden. On the other hand, it shows that the “destructive” insects can be a lot more appealing than the “beneficial” ones, who in this case are, in Lori’s words, “creepy.”

[ Posted: 15:01] | [ Category: /hobbies] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]