What a pest!

 As I was inspecting my garden this week, I noticed my pea plants were looking a little stressed. I wondered whether I had been watering them enough in the 96-degree weather we had been having.

My peas snuck up on me! They were just flowers a few days ago.

The plants look pretty good all told, but they could be better.

All in all, they were doing better than I imagined after getting a late start planting them. Peas love the cool, wet weather of early spring. A hot, dry week is not their thing. But something else was off.

After picking my first harvest of peas, I took a closer look. The mottled look of some of the green leaves told me leaf-sucking insects were around.

I flipped a few leaves over, and sure enough I had red spider mites. A quick Google told me that plants are more susceptible to damage from spider mites when they don’t get enough water, so in a sense I was right about the dry weather making them unhappy.

Pea leaf with several spider mites--some of the yellowed leaves had twice that many!

Now some people reach for the insecticide at this point, but instead I went to the Internet to see what one of the cooperative extension service publications said about managing red spider mites. One of the first suggestions was washing the leaves, which is an old trick that I remember my grandfather used (he was a Master Gardener). It doesn’t kill them, but it temporarily removes them, makes it harder to stick around, and puts them where ground predators can reach them. At least it made me feel better.

The same leaf after spraying the mites off with a hose.

Overall, though, my garden has been doing fairly well this week. The zinnias sprouted, my cucumbers are getting huge, my potatoes are looking healthy, and I have my first baby tomato.

Zinnia seedlings

Little baby cherry tomato

I think my cucumber vines doubled in height in the past week.

Signs of life

 May and June are definitely the fun part of having a vegetable garden for me. The weather isn’t too hot yet, and every day I see new growth. In a few weeks I’ll start harvesting. At the moment I’m just enjoying how lovely my garden looks and getting excited about baby veggies. In addition to being tasty, the pea vines in particular have such pretty flowers.

'Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea Pod' bloom

Baby 'Burpless' cucumber with flower

Chives have such pretty flowers, too.

I’m pretty much done planting, but it’s not so hot yet that I can’t plant more if I want to. Once a week or so I’ll find an empty pot or some room in the dirt and plant something. I used to map out my garden plan and planting schedule ahead of time, but in the last few years I've found joy in letting my vegetable garden develop more "organically," so to speak. There are always leftover seeds around my house, or plants calling my name at my favorite local garden centers. I don't know whether I'll end up being busy one weekend, so I plant whatever I think will grow in the time I have.

Left to right: Peas, carrots, strawberries, and cucumbers (plus a mystery plant, probably pumpkin, that volunteered itself in the middle of the cucumbers)

Left to right: tomatoes (which you can barely see under the potatoes), potatoes, asparagus

This past week I planted some old zinnia seeds between the cucumbers and the strawberries. The week before I planted more scarlet runner bean seeds to accompany the one that survived from last year. The beans are loving this heat, and the last one emerged yesterday. The jalapeño likes the heat as well—I planted seeds a month ago, and the one that germinated finally has true leaves. I should plant more in another pot.

'NuMex Lemon Spice' jalapeno seedling

Scarlet runner bean seedling