Vegetable Garden Update: Tomatoes and Peppers

The vegetable garden is going great these days. We've got tons of tomatoes and peppers growing in the garden and squash and melons growing on mounds outside of our fenced garden in some mounds we made.

The peppers and tomatoes had a tough beginning, but are doing great now. Here's a summary of what we learned our first year.

1. Starting them in pots in the house worked well. We bought a warming mat and some lights to get them going.

2. When we first put them in the garden, they were getting devoured by the earwigs. We learned NOT to put mulch in the garden when the earwig population is at it's height, which seems to be winter and spring. Of course we had an unusually warm winter this year, with days in the 90s in January and February. The earwig traps worked well at that time too.

3. We didn't stake the tomatoes or peppers and some of them broke with the heavy rains we finally got in May and with the wind. Next year, we will want to be sure to stake them.

4 .Once the nights start getting warm, the plants will go crazy! Another reason to stake them, the tomato plants are so big that they are spreading into the walkways and I am not sure how we will reach all of them.

Pest Control: Earwigs - Round 2

Apparently, earwigs like to live in straw that is used as mulch in your garden. We were providing a safe, comfortable place for the earwigs to live by day with plenty of food to eat by night. Once we got rid of the mulch, the earwig problem became much more manageable. We had added mulch early in the year because we had an unusually warm winter. As summer approaches, we are noticing fewer earwigs in general, so we may try mulching again this summer. We'll see how that goes.

Pest Control - Earwig Battle: Round One

We think that our vegetable garden is being attacked by earwigs. We see them everywhere around the garden (and house for that matter - which is really disgusting by the way!). Thanks to Google, we discovered a pretty simple trap for them. You put about an inch of vegetable oil and something smelly like soy sauce (some of the articles and YouTube videos suggest the water or oil from tuna) in a shallow container (we used yogurt containers and small cans) and bury the container in the ground so that the opening is at ground level. The earwigs are attracted by the smell and fall into the container and the oil coats them so that they cannot get out. When you go out in the morning to check your traps you will be both delighted and disgusted at the number of dead earwigs in your containers.

We've only done it for a couple nights so far and it seems like there are less holes in the new leaf growth. Hopefully it will help a lot.