Wooly Aphids and Small Harvest

Well, I've had my first infestation. I noticed a couple days ago this white fuzz on my tomato and strawberry plants. My first thought was some sort of fungus since I had the shade cloth over the garden now. However, upon further investigation, it was a bug. This bug is called a wooly aphid and it has white fuzzy all over it and it can jump really high. Weird. Anyway, it was also all over my cucumber plant. I researched and I am trying the least invasive solution first. I took a spray bottle, filled it with warm water and a couple drops of dish detergent and then sprayed directly on the white fuzz areas of the plants. I had to be careful because the bug would jump off the plant and try to jump on me. Oh the joys of gardening, haha! I'll keep you posted on how this works at ridding my poor plants of this yucky bug problem. This is a good reminder of why we need to be constants tenders to our gardens. If we don't visit our gardens regularly and take a close look, things like wooly aphids could go unnoticed and ruin all our efforts!
The above is a really good picture of what it looks like. Do you see the white fuzzy material right in the middle of the picture?

In this picture it is harder to see, but it's at the top vine part of the tomato at the top. As you can see we are getting some ripe tomatoes. However, we are only getting about one per day right now, so Cambria is eating them as quick as they come, hahah!

The white aphids are on my strawberries too. To the left of the big strawberry you can see it best. Yuck!

This is another good shot of the wooly aphids on my tomato plants. It's on the large stalk just to the center left.

The mulching and shadecloth helped the peas a bit, but mostly so that I could keep the crop that already was producing. I don't think it will make it much longer and I would suprised if it produces any more pods. :( It was a GREAT experiment and learning crop for this year! I need to get them planted earlier in the year and protect the soil early on.

Here is my garden today. It looks a bit overgrown. I have learned so many valuable lessons with my first garden.

The whole idea I had with this first garden was to start really small so that one it wouldn't be as overwhelming and two that I could learn what worked and what didn't before I dedicated a bunch more time and space to doing more. It really has worked out well that way. Just as I started off my food storage small with a 3 month supply so that I could figure out what we used and what we didn't. When I'm done with this season, I will dedicate a blog post to list all the lessons I've learned. I will share all good things I did and all the not-so-good things. I'll list what I will do different and what I'll do the same. For instance, my lettuce is loving the shade cloth, but I think some of my other plants could have used more sun. So, next time I'll have a full sun box and a shadecloth box. I'll plant different things in each. But, alas, that's for a different post!

The problem with the small garden is that I don't ever get a really big harvest. I'll get a handful of green beans and then have to wait a couple days to get more. So, to get enough to cook and entree is difficult. But, that was to be expected and it gives me a great idea of how many plants I might need to plant next time so that I get a good size helping at once. :)


Here are the peas I have harvested so far. I might have to cook these up, it's not even enough for one serving, haha! But, they do look really yummy!

Here are the green beans I have harvested so far. They also will be cooked up within the day. :)