Our urban garden experiment has been going for a bit now and we’re seeing some fruit from our labor! If you’re just turning in, we planted a garden on our apartment’s balcony in 5 gallon buckets, milk jugs and assorted pots.
We’re learning a lot about gardening…this stuff is tough work.
“The sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, it is brown knees”.-unknown
Urban Garden: Fruit
After weeks and weeks of watering and fruit has been spotted! The cherry tomato has dozens of green baby tomatos. We should be eating salad soon!
The 2/6 pepper plants have baby peppers growing, the others are flowering so they should be fruiting (is that what you say?) soon.
Urban Garden: Bugs and Disease
Geez this garden thing was supposed to be easy. Hey we live in the city, how did the bugs and disease find our plants?
Mystery holes in potato plant.
It seems something is chomping on our potato plant. Possible culprits:
- Colorado Potato Beetle- This little bugger likes potatoes and maybe even peppers. Haven’t seen one yet, so I’m sure it’s the culprit.
- Flea Beetle- Another beetle. No sign of this one either.
- Aphids- Could be potato or peach aphid. These guys munch and spread disease.
- Slugs- I’ve read that slugs come out at night and munch on plants and disappear during the day…I’ll have to go out at night with the flashlight to investigate!
- It could be we just got a diseased crop that happens occasionally.
Our 3 squash and 3 zucchini plants have powdery mildew. Gross I know. It looks like athletes foot.
White Powdery Mildew on Squash.
Powdery mildew likes hot dry areas and could be caused by too much shade and overcrowding. I’m pretty sure we’ve overcrowded and over planted our 5-gallon buckets, I’ll try separating and giving them space.
We’re going to have to try a water spay made of 1:10 milk solution. We’ll have to wait for the “June Gloom” to dissipate as you need a sunny day.
Urban Garden: Failures
We’ve only had one fatality so that’s good odds. The basil plant bit the dust weeks ago. It seems it got neglected in the watering rotation.
We’ve got our watering rotation down now. Every other day and it seems to be working out. Our toddler even gets in on the action to water a few plants with a cup.
How is your garden going? Have you ever dealt with potato bugs or white powdery mildew on your squash?
