A Garden War on Multiple Fronts
This past week, our garden has been under attack.
It began when we discovered our entire crop of Chinese broccoli decimated by leaf-cutter ants. Then, a plague of whiteflies appeared and spread cucumber mosaic virus over our tomatoes and pumpkins.
A whitefly on the end of a tomato leaf.
Two days later, an army of red spider mites marched in and attacked our beans and cabbages. Yesterday, caterpillars began grazing on our cucumber leaves and last night our first locust dropped by.
Every day brings new troubles. Our sense of optimism suggests that with five plagues down, we are about half way done. Maybe we are batting six for ten if you count swine flu.
This is not to say that success has alluded us. Most of our Asian vegetables are doing well. These include Chinese water spinach, Chinese broccoli, daikon radish, napa cabbage, white mustard greens, perilla, and chrysanthemum. They seem to thrive in this heat and are relatively resistant to pests and diseases. Our arugula is also plodding along and we are into our second crop within a month.
