After a four-week hiatus, I was back in the garden and thanks to Ms. Nagle and Mr. Quijano, the garden has managed to suffer the terrible heat and arid conditions amazingly well. We had a tenant living on one of the tomato plants, a huge caterpillar covered with small white modules. After a little bit of research, I discovered that this caterpillar had a load of eggs clinging to its back. Apologies for the fuzzy image but it was all I could get with my limited technology. As best as I can determine, this is a moth caterpillar, not a “good” caterpillar to have in the garden. As will be noted, some caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies and the damage they can cause to a garden is minimal. But many moth caterpillars as well as hornworms, army worms and cut worms can devastate a garden with their eating habits. In the future, to attract good caterpillars to the garden, plant dill or parsley, making sure that you do so away from tomato plants. Also remember that gardens need insects to be productive. Without bees to pollinate squash flowers, we would have no squashes and that includes watermelons!
Happily we had loads of bees that were attracted to the herbs particularly the basil and the peppermint but we still have only a few baby squash to show for all the bees’ efforts. Baby carrots and cherry tomatoes are ready for the table as are much of the herbs we planted which have gone to seed and now should be pulled to make room for another planting. Also poking up a healthy head is some of the lettuce that was planted as seeds in early June. Almost time to make a salad!
Gave the garden a serious watering, making sure that the water drained down well below the surface, giving the finger poke test to check on the degree of saturation of the soil.
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