Sophomore Gardener: Beetles behaving badly with my beans

Note: With the guidance of editor Doug Oster, Mike Palm is chronicling his adventures (or perhaps misadventures) in his second year of gardening.

The garden is looking good (with one caveat). Rain followed by sunny days has led to green everywhere.

tomatoes

The biggest regret so far has been the size of my tomato cages. They are way too small, and the leaves are pouring out of them. The rain had some of the branches falling down, but I just added some string to hopefully give them support. Next year there is going to be an upgrade on the cages for sure.

I’m starting to see tomatoes, but nothing red just yet.

Doug says: Those tomatoes look awesome, and it’s very common for newer gardeners to use cages that are too small. It’s not too late to surround those plants with a “real” cage (I think). I can’t really see how big the plants are. I make my cages out of concrete reinforcing wire. It’s the stuff they use when pouring sidewalks. I cut the roll into 5-foot lengths. I make them into the circular cage which is also 5 feet tall. If that won’t work, get some 6-foot tall tomato stakes and use three to make a triangle. Surround them with twine to make a cage.

beetles

The biggest issue seems to be beetles attacking my beans. Once the beans started climbing the trellis, they took off at what seems an exponential pace. But now they’re being attacked by nasty little black beetles. I flicked off a bunch of them and started spraying them with Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew (available here). (After reading so many of Doug’s stories, it seemed like that was the right course. We’ll see if it’s effective in saving the beans.)

Doug says: It will stop the bean damage as long as the beetles ingest the Captain Jack’s. If you want to make a big dent in the population, get out there in the morning and knock the pests into a jar of soapy water. What’s left will eat the Captain Jack’s and will be done. It’s a great, organic solution for most chewing insects. It will take care of the bad bugs like beetles, but leave good bugs and soil life alone.

Other than that, everything seems to be growing as it should. There aren’t any flowers yet on the zinnias or the Mexican sunflowers, but they’re getting taller.

The lettuce and cucumbers are moving along too. I had to remove and relocate a bunch of the cucumber plants’ climbers, as they had wrapped around pretty much anything they could. There’s also been a new addition … a ghost pepper plant, courtesy of Doug. We’ll see if I can handle those in a few months.

On a much more positive note, my family actually ate kohlrabi for the first time. We had never tried it, but we had the seeds left over from the Seed of the Month Club (join here … you never know what you’re going to get!)

Two of the bulbs were about the size of a baseball and the third was bigger than a softball. After some online research, we cut them into half-inch slices, tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them in the oven. I thought they tasted like the stem of a broccoli while my wife thought they had more of a mild radish flavor. The kids tried them but didn’t really care for them. The important takeaway was my wife asked me to plant more for the fall.

Doug says: Kohlrabi is something that many gardeners fall in love with. I love it raw, cut into strips and then dipped into something tasty. I’m thrilled that you’re going to plant more. This purple kohlrabi will grow well into winter and actually will sweeten up after a frost. Looks like you’re having a great second year.