Lovely salad greens being cut by Claudia this morning! :) Can't wait to have them for lunch. A lovely meet up this a.m. - was so inspired by Diane and James' square foot gardening mojo that Adel and I are going to redo our plot with a lumber build out grid in the next two weeks. Thanks for the great idea!  :)

Growing Corn on South Beach.

We thought we'd try growing some corn in our plot. The seeds were planted in early March, and by mid-April, they were 4-6 inches tall and looking quite healthy :

As you can see, Diane is experimenting with 'square foot' gardening methods. Hopefully this will be a good alternative to growing in rows, and maybe more suited to our allotments. We've done a similar thing with our beans, and we sure have a productive couple of square feet with them!

However, at the end of April, although the plants were looking nice and tall (12-18 inches), we noticed strange brown material which looked a bit like soil on the leaves, especially near to the center of the plants. About the half the plants seemed to exhibit this. A healthy plant, and an affected one are shown below.



Opening up these plants revealed a nasty looking black 'worm'. Obviously the larvae of a moth of some kind, we removed about 8 plants and made sure the worms were dispensed with. How sad to see our lovely corn destroyed already. :(

Our first thought was that they could be corn borers. These crafty creatures bore into the stem at the base, and eat their way up to the top. However, comparing the worm (below) to that on a web page at the university of Kentucky revealed that they were not indeed corn borers.




From looking at various resources online, we've ruled out the following :

• armyworms
• european corn borers
• cut worms
  

We still suspect the following could be the culprits :

• corn earworms (also known as the tomato fruitworm and the cotton bollworm)

We'll update this post and keep you informed! If anyone has any ideas, please let us know. In the mean-time, here's the current status, as of 30th April, 2009 :


-James and Diane.

How to Make an Herb box! (Garden Class #2)

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  "Miami Beach Victory Garden Building an herb box"
video by: Cork Friedman captncork@mac.com

If you missed last week's class at the garden you can view this video and get an idea of how an herb box is incorporated into your garden.

Step #1: Dig a hole to remove existing sandy/poor soil (such as the one in this plot).
Step #2: Add new soil mixture and turn it over.
Step #3: Smooth soil by using a rake.
Step #4: Place wood frame on top of newly turned over soil and fill with more potting soil.
Step #5: Plant herbs inside frame.
Step #6: Don't forget to water!

Kids at the Garden

So the great thing about garden clean-ups is having the kids show up..Today we had Bix and Lindsey who clearly had a fab time eating tomatoes al dente!

YUM!