Confessions of a crappy gardener.

[punafish]

Surely I am the crappiest gardener in the land. My enemies include slugs, snails, leaf miners, birds and myself. Thankfully my wife’s discipline and efforts are keeping us in the game. Here’s an update on the status of our garden with the caveat that it’s small scale, and at a much lower elevation that Jay’s (Upper Hawaiian Shores near Da Store):

Tomatoes: depends on the plant; the cherry tomatoes are thriving as everyone on this forum said they would. Leaf miners are doing their damage to the leaves of other plants, but don’t seem to be affecting the fruit. Started using Thuricide today (small concentrate amount mixed with water), will let you know our results.

Basil: no problems

Cucumber: so far so good, but everyone says the first year is easy, then it’s “hide and seek” to stay a step ahead of the pests.

Green beans: thriving, but the birds are pilfering our stash

Lemon grass: one survivor, one casualty.

Lettuce (some in the garden, some in planters): slugs got us in the garden at first but the bait seems to be working

Radishes: no problems so far, but our second crop is on the small side--not enough sunlight?

Mitsuba (trefoil): thriving; but what the hell is a trefoil?

Cilantro: thriving

Strawberry vine: so far so good, no fruit yet; growing my own strawberries seems too good to be true so I’m very pessimistic about this.

In addition to the above, we recently bought seeds from UH Manoa, cost me a grand total of $11. Packet includes: hybrid cucumber “Milo”; bulb onion (Awahia); bell pepper (Kaala); lettuce (Manoa); hubrid tomato (N-65); tomato variety (Kewalo); pole green bean (Manoa Wonder); kai choy Hirayama (W.R. resustant). So far we’ve only gotten the Kewalo started. Will keep you posted.

A nice extra benefit of gardening has been the reduction in our garbage just through composting (from 3 large bags/week to one or less.) The affect of the compost on the garden and my podocarpus plants has been dramatic. And this morning while digging in the dirt, I was pleasantly surprised at how many worms have migrated to the garden since we started spreading compost…threw half a dozen worms into the compost bin!

Great topic Jay!

Tim