Garden Happenings

Meconema thalassinum (Drumming Katydid)

I've been told when the Katydids start buzzing the summer is almost over. That may be as I'm now into canning tomatoes and the weather has cooled considerable. A Katydid is cricket like but not a true cricket. They make a buzzing sound very different from the sound crickets make. Quite often you can hear their buzzing but seldom see them so I was very pleased to be able to photograph this drumming katydid. I managed to get several photographs while he sat contentedly making his own music for a couple of hours. He didn't seem to mind me puttering in the garden either!



Unidentified Rose Worm

This little critter and his friends really annoyed me. I only have two rose bushes and they decided that rose leaves were the food of choice. Since there are a lot it takes little time to strip the rose leaves. Like most annoying and destructive critters, my method of removal is manual. In this case I popped the offending caterpillars into a soap solution. I'm still picking off the little critters! I haven't identified them yet.

Late Blight

Bed #1 has late blight. I'm not happy over this situation. It appears to have started in the Lemon Boys then quickly spread. Late blight is a virus that if left unchecked will quickly spread to other tomato plants as well as peppers and potatoes. The easiest solution is to remove infected vegetation and burn it. Do not compost! To avoid the spread of the virus do not work around wet vegetation. Despite my diligent efforts the blight is spreading in bed #1, I don't expect to get any more Lemon Boys as the plants are pretty much destroyed. One Lemon Boy clipping that was transfered to the greenhouse also shows signs of blight so to avoid contaminating the greenhouse it had to be destroyed. I'm going to take a few clippings of the Ultra Sweets in the hopes of them not being contaminated. I want to grow some in the greenhouse then indoors when the weather turns frigid. It will be a new experiment.

Happy Gardening

Garden Gnome