Tomato pest or opportunistic scavenger? And a corn story

We have so many tomatoes coming in right now. We picked a couple hundred recently. But I found something strange on the Amish paste tomatoes. It is a good thing there are hundreds of them!

I have never seen or heard of a woodlouse eating a tomato before. So I was genuinely surprised to find this tomato being devoured by a bunch of tiny crustaceans. It always amazes me to think these little guys are more closely related to lobsters than ladybugs. This is the common rough woodlouse or Porcellio scaber. 

These are not typical tomato pest. From the research I have done it seems they will eat a tomato or strawberry after something else has bitten the fruit. It seems once they have a way in then they will gladly eat your tomatoes. A lot of people believe it is usually a slug that does the initial damage with the woodlice following since they share similar niches, shady wet areas. I am going to put out some beer slug traps and see if I get any slugs. I have been meaning to make more toad habitat so maybe this will motivate me.

So I learned a lesson in corn farming. It seems I should have known this since my father's family were corn and potato farmers, but I guess some skills and info didn't make it from my grandfathers generation to mine. One of the reason we are homesteading and doing the blog is to relearn these important skills so we can pass the information on to our children and grandchildren. This corn is a solid blue corn variety. I planted it next to our yellow and white sweet corn. The color yellow is dominate so if your blue corn gets cross-pollinated by your yellow corn this is what happens. I will only plant sweet corn next year. Lesson learned.  

Not everything is a success

I thought I would share a couple homestead fails we have had recently. I try to look at these events as learning experiences. "Try" is the key word here. 

If you are new to bee keeping this may not look like a bad picture. Plenty of healthy looking bees building comb and using propolis to seal up the hive. The problem is the comb is going perpendicular to the top bars. This is called cross-combing and is bad for a hive if you want to manage it properly. I should have checked the hive earlier and corrected it sooner. At this point my plan is to wait until spring and harvest this quarter of the hive for honey and watch them more carefully when they are drawing comb. 

This is whats left of the pole beans I planted a while back. I posted earlier on an assassin bug I found in the garden eating a bean leaf beetle (Cerotoma trifurcata). Well I guess I needed an army of assassin bugs to deal with the amount of bean leaf beetles that came this year. They ate every single plant that sprouted, but they did not touch the established pole beans growing 15 feet away. Maybe they just like new growth. I planted the beans late, hoping to get a second crop this year, so maybe I need to start them earlier next year. I will use this area to plant winter snap peas soon.

Garden Update Sept 2012

We are officially corn farmers! We have two kinds of sweet corn and a blue corn variety. 

This is one of many watermelons growing in between the corn stalks. We have two varieties growing this year. The ones we got last year were so sweet, best watermelon I have ever had.

We have been eating a lot of spaghetti squash since we started the Paleo diet. Now we are growing them. This is such an awesome squash, it really does mimic eating spaghetti, sweet spaghetti. 

We planted 4 of these Amish paste tomato plants in a raised bed. There are literally hundreds of tomatoes on them. We will be canning paste soon. It seems they all ripen at the same time, perfect for canning.

This is a volunteer ground cherry from last year. I will make some salsa with these and the corn. 

The peppers are going crazy now. The problem is I always forget to write down where I put the red, yellow and orange peppers so I tend to eat all of them green. One day I will remember to keep a better garden journal.

I don't like many fresh tomatoes but these orange cherry tomatoes called Blondkopfchen are very good. It is also a very prolific producer. You have to pick everyday to keep up with these. 

Here are some more tomatoes going crazy. There are thousands of tomatoes in the garden right now. We will be picking a ton tonight after being gone on vacation for a week. 

I think these are the mortgage lifter tomatoes. I will know for sure if they turn red. They may be dr wyche's yellow tomato. Again, one day I will properly plot the garden out, I just get so excited when I plant I forget to write it down.

These are Jerusalem artichokes. I can't wait to dig these in the fall. I will do a whole post on it when I harvest.

Here are the Cascade hops. I need to harvest and dry these out this weekend. 

Here are the Catawba grapes. They are so good. I eat a couple or five every time I go to the garden. It will be a few years until I get enough for wine.

Here is a pic looking out at the main garden. It sure is nice to swing after a hot day in the garden. 

Assassin Bug!

We are really lucky having all of these beneficial insects in our garden. This is what happens when you don't indiscriminately spray pesticides in your garden. You get a healthy ecosystem that polices itself. Check out the bean leaf beetle (Cerotoma trifurcata) lunch this assassin bug found. You can see the damage this garden pest does.

Blue Tomatoes and Mrs Clawfingers

These are OSU Blue tomatoes. They were developed by Jim Myers Ph.D, who holds the Baggett-Frazier Endowed Chair of Vegetable Breeding and Genetics in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. That's a mouthful. They are very good, according to Dara. They turn more of a dark purple almost black when exposed to direct sunlight.

I almost "picked" this green pole bean, then I noticed the segmented abdomen and realized I had found Mrs Bitey Clawfingers. Hopefully her and Mr Clawfingers will get busy this year and have tons of baby Clawfingers. 

One of ours?

Not really sure if this is one of our bees, but every time I see a honey bee in the garden I like to think so. Bees absolutely love onion flowers. If you ever see your onions going to flower let them go and enjoy all the beneficial insects they bring in. 

The bees are really filling up the hive. I can't wait till spring to try some of that honey!

Our first kohlrabi!

Dara cooked a kohlrabi casserole with the first ever kohlrabi to come out of the garden. It was delicious! I need to plant some more of these soon for a fall harvest.