Planting Pictures, and How to Control Flea Bettles

Just thought I would post some pictures from the other day when me and Frank got some planting done.  We planted all plants, some kale, mustard greens and kohlrabi.  These pictures are from last Thursday May 14th. 

Frank is getting the hoops into the ground so that we can lay down the row cover.  You can barely see Frank and you can not see the hoops in the ground, but oh, well.

 

  Here we had just finished getting the row cover down when it was starting to get dark.  Just in time.  The row cover is covering a row of mustard greens.  It is a thin row cover, the purpose of it is not to keep the plants warm like you would usually use row cover for, but instead to keep insects (mostly flea beetles) from completely destroying the greens.  Flea beetles can be a real pain to deal with.  If you do not do something to protect plants such as mustard greens and eggplant, they can almost completely eat the plant to nothing.  The funny thing is flea beetles are just very, very tiny black bugs, it is unbelievable how much damage such a small bug can do.  So if your mustard greens, eggplant, radishes, turnips, kale, collards, kohlrabi, or a few other veggies, are getting eaten, and you see very little black bugs that jump really quick as soon as you try to touch them, you probably have a flea beetle problem.  Next time I am out there (today or tomorrow) I am going to have to make some sticky traps to put under the row cover.  No matter how fast you put the row cover up, and how tight you seal it there will be some flea beetles under there, and the sticky traps can help to get rid of them.  I will have to take some pictures and do a post on how I make my own traps.  

Pictures - Cold Crops Planted

Here are a couple pictures of some of what I have planted so far.

To the far left (in the above picture) I have a bunch of stuff that I started by seed, including peas, turnips, beets, radishes, and carrots, there is also a row of onions.  The row that is almost in the middle of the picture are cabbage, broccoli and some cauliflower plants.  Under the row cover I have mustard greens and kale.  I covered them with the row cover to protect the plants from bugs and deer.  Then to the far right you can see some of my garlic.

What I planted from seed was kind of slow coming up for a while, since I planted it just before we had some cold weather.  Luckily it was cold but not wet if the ground would have been wet the seeds probably would have rotted, but they are coming up good now, so hopefully I should be alright.

I have all my lettuces planted elsewhere at home, once everything gets bigger and picture worthy I will post a picture of my lettuce area.