I Heart My Row Cover

As discussed in earlier posts, this year we finally put up the hoops to use our floating row cover which was purchased last season from garden's alive but didn't get used. At first we were a bit skeptical that it would really work but after 2 years of losing our bean crop to the mexican bean beetle we were willing to try.

If you are not familiar, the mexican bean beetle is an insidious little creature that is immune to all but the most hardcore pesticides, which of course we do not want to use on our organic garden. We used kaolin clay last year (under the brand Surround At-Home Protectant) which worked okay but you have to apply it regularly and it is really hard to spray the underside of every bean leaf. So this year, our plan was just to keep them off from the start.

Boy, has it worked so far!! Everything else in our garden has been ravaged by the pests that got a free pass this year with our un-winter but everything under the row cover looks amazing. If you follow us you may remember that we were having problems with pill bugs in this bed earlier in the season. Our hypothesis worked...we worked in more organic material for them to eat and they have left our plants alone ever since.

We plan to use more covers in the future, particularly for the self-pollinating plants like the peppers and the eggplant. Luckily we do have a second cover to use; we just have to put up more hoops first. Seems like garden construction is never finished.


Here is a pic of our row cover all buttoned up. We use garden stakes around the edges and pots at the ends.

Here are what our beans and beets looked like when we peaked underneath a few weeks ago:

Here are our beans about a week ago: (They have NEVER gotten this big before without most the leaves suffering from various degrees of skeletonization). Supposedly they self-pollinate but we are starting to get nervous about that and may roll the cover back for a bit to let the bees in.

 Some of our harvests so far...yummy cynlindra beets. When you cut into them they are the most gorgeous blood red color.

 And here are some gorgeous golden beets waiting to be harvested.

We have only had one sacrifice so far. Something stripped the one and only kohlrabi that germinated in this bed. We suspect slugs. But whatever it was it has left everything else along. Thank goodness for small garden miracles.

Poor start to the season

We have already had a few garden sacrifices this growing season. Most of our bean plants have been eaten by pill bugs. Sigh. This has never been an issue before, but we did a few things differently this year and we suspect that these changes are the culprit.

1.) We did not turn the soil. In our attempt to stave off the morning glory infestation we took the lasagna gardening approach and layered either compost or leaf mulch over our beds but didn't turn it into our soil. Bad idea. I don't think lasagna gardening is intended for clay soils. In our big bed, we have had the worst lettuce germination we have ever had. We have reseeded twice but still have only one row of lettuce thriving (pics below). I think the seeds can't get started in the compost/leaf mulch.

More concerning, in our bean bed where we did only compost and no leaf mulch pill bugs have eaten our bean seedlings. They have never bothered our plants before, and I think this is because we usually dig in copious amounts of leaf mulch which becomes pill bug food. This year they have nothing to munch on except our seedlings. Since they are only a nuisance in the bed with no leaf mulch, clearly using leaf mulch (and digging it in) makes a difference.

2.) We've watered...a lot. Historically we are horrible with watering. Horrible. So this year, trying to start the year off right, we've been watering a ton. Turns out we've just softened our bean seeds and made them easy for the pill bugs to chew on.

3.) We started earlier. We had an unseasonably warm winter which allowed us to start plants earlier. Good for lettuce but not good for beans which if planted in cold soil can rot before they germinate according to Carole Turner's Seed Sowing and Saving book (which I just learned after I checked this out of the library). Well damn. 


Happy highlights:

Chamomile is huge and gorgeous. We're planning to move the sun box to a better place in the garden (and eradicate the virginia creeper growing behind it...eek!). Since there is only some opportunistic mint in the sun box, when we remove the box we are going to extend the chamomile bed and make a big "tea" bed to include the mint. 

 Radishes and one mesclun have come up and one lettuce row looks great.

Also we have some rogue asparagus (which we thought we sacrificed to build this bed but I guess nature finds a way):