Interlude

From now until August, there's nothing to do but weed, water, and harvest, as needed.

Then in August, it will be time to plant more "spring" greens, which will mature and be harvestable until the first really heavy freezes.  Usually you can continue to eat greens from the garden here in Toronto until mid-November or later.

Trouble Off the Short List

As for me, I'm having insect problems I've never had before. For one thing, I've tried some new things this year that are not on the short list, and I can see why they won't ever be! Broccoli, for example, is a brassica, closely related to mizuna, arugula, and mustard, but because it has to grow much longer and bigger, it is far more susceptible to insects. At worst, the spring greens get some holes in them, and then you harvest them and they are done. But my broccoli are attracting all kinds of things I have never seen in my garden.

One short list item is also getting insect attention for the first time, and that's my beans. It seems I have bean beetles (though I haven't seen them, I'm just interpreting the damage). So another factor here is that I have been growing more things in my garden for longer, and so I now I guess I have a greater variety of different insects around, including the harmful ones.

In all cases I'm reading up on the different signs and symptoms, and trying different natural controls. For the larger things: slugs, cabbage butterfly caterpillars, hand picking is helping. Slug numbers are way down, and I'm getting good at spotting the velvety pale green cabbage butterfly caterpillars on the broccoli leaves.

For smaller things or mysterious things I've never spotted but can only speculate on the identity of, diatomaceous earth seems to be helping. DE is fine white dust, a crushed mineral deposit of fossilized microorganisms. It is an abrasive gets into bugs shells and dries them out. It's relatively safe for people (used in natural cosmetic products), though you should not inhale the dust, which contains silica.

What didn't work well was the garlic/chile insecticidal soap. It was not dilute enough, and definitely caused harm to the broccoli leaves I sprayed. As always, internet sources are highly unreliable. (Beware the endlessly proliferating e-How sites, they are very inaccurate!) I later found another, better source which had a much more dilute recipe. I wish I had researched more thoroughly before I used the first recipe. I may return to that, although if DE continues working, I will avoid insecticidal soap (which seems to kill beneficial insects more readily than DE).