Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Day at the demo garden

Today was fabulous.
As some of you may remember one of my summer jobs is that I designed, planted, and have been tending to a demonstration garden at King County's south treatment plant.

Everything is in bloom and looking beautiful (my babies are all grown up).  

When I got to the garden today I witnessed the most intense aphid infestation. Where do those buggers come from??? I immediately saw that my work was cut out for me. Why was this good news??? This was good news because it meant that I needed to spend the entire day fighting the aphids and nursing my injured plants back to health. That's right, the ENTIRE day in the garden.

These sungold tomatoes made for a
delicious snack at about 4pm.

To combat the aphids I used a STRONG spray of water on the plants. This is an effective way to kill the bugs, but it also beats up the plants a bit. After the water spray I misted the plants with a diluted soapy water solution, which also kills aphids. This works because the aphid's soft bodies desiccate due to the soap.

Lady bugs came in to help me with my work.



South treatment plant (in Renton) is having an open house this Saturday August 7th, from 10am to 1pm. I will be there giving tours of the demonstration garden, and giving away free bags of GroCo compost to the first 50 people who arrive. Please come to say hi and see what I've been up to this summer.


I love honey bees
Dark beauty eggplant
So many cucumbers!
I love the juxtaposition between the beautiful and soft flowers
against the industrial wastewater treatment plant.

No comments:

Post a Comment