Category: Gardening

The Colorado potato beetle is back again

I already was on the look out for it

I have been checking my potatoes regularly and everything was Ok until today (Friday 3.6.2022). I wanted to sow something between the potatoes, on the hill beds, which where left in the ground last year and have sprouted and grown beautifully, but left some bare spots. I was happy to see a predator beetle, but at the same time I saw it. The first Colorado potato beetle of this year. So I called the kids to me for help und surged all of the potatoes and found a lot of beetles. Luckily the kids are not disgusted by the beetles and where a great help taking the beetles away from the beds and crushing them. So from today we will be surging for the Colorado potato beetle first thing every day.

Furthermore we have seen that the potatoes are short before going to bloom. That means the early varieties can be harvested soon. We are looking forward to that.

Supplement:

The next day I got the predator beetle in front of the camera and the potatoes already bloomed. Furthermore we found a hand full of Colorado potato beetle again and also found there eggs already.

Starting pumpkins & cucumbers from seed & planting them

I started pumpkins and cucumbers from seed in a caravan and outside for comparison

Beginning of Mai I started pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchini and melons from seed. I did not have space in the Tiny House, so I put them in the caravan. With the sun shining on the caravan we get 25°C during the day, which is good for germination with these types of plants. Only at night it gets colder, but apparently that did not matter. The seeds germinated well. Only when I put the plantlets outside underneath out greenhouse roof we got a storm with harsh winds. The cucumber plantlets where damaged and only one survived.

A few days later I hat sown the same outside. I did not have enough space inside to do all of the seeds and the wetter was so nice and warm that I wanted to try this out. I took an old gutter filled it with soil and put in all of these seeds I had left. I covered this with root barrier which is black and takes the heat of the sun. After that we first had bad wetter, but after a few days we had sunshine again and it did not take long for the seeds to germinate.

Unfortunately with all the rain we had, we had problems with slugs, even the, normally useful, tiger slugs ate my plantlets. I don’t really like it, but I did use slug pellets, so they will not eat all. In the meantime I have planted the plantlets that are still there.

The cucumbers in a raised bed, melons under the greenhouse roof, zucchini outside along the greenhouse and the pumpkins on the hill beds and in the hotbed where we had divided layer of hay.