Saturday, January 16, 2010

No more vegetables

Someone asked about my vegetable patch and I regret to say that I have stopped growing vegetables in my patio. I've only just disposed of the last of the big white styrofoam boxes and other paraphernalia used for vegetable growing.

As much as I would love to continue growing vegetables in my patio, I just couldn't cope with the amount of disease and pests that were invading my garden. Edibles are well, edible, so they are a magnet for these undesirable creatures. I could never eat the vegetables because the leaves were covered with white flies and other pathogens. These pesky things invade the non-edible section too. They were everywhere! My rose got hit, so did the curry and rosemary shrubs. My garden was always sick.

Strangely, these pests disappeared the moment I stopped growing edibles. The other plants started thriving again. The herbs are so healthy now, not to mention the other non-edibles. I can now declare my garden pest free again.

I must admit that my garden was quite an eye sore during the vegetable growing days. There were boxes of chyesim, raddish, lettuce and spinach growing in every corner in a most unruly fashion, my garden was quite messy. Now that the boxes are gone, I've gained so much space I promptly ordered a new set of patio furniture and a large parasol.

I'm not quite sure what my garden will be like in future but I know I'll always be a gardener. In fact, I forgot to mention that I have newly germinated spinach and tomatoes outside. I'm sure there will always be some vegetables growing in my patio, just not as much as before.

5 comments:

  1. Blur Ting, I have been getting rid of pests also! I wonder if the cloudy and rainy weather last month has anything to do with these pests. The other thing that worries me are those tiny snails. I suspect they got into my containers from the bottom. I used good soil but I still end up having tiny snails??? Currently, I really dislike those white alphid and mealy bug. They seems to be immortal.

    Now that you have gotten rid of the pests, I hope your plants will grow healthily quickly.

    Enjoy your weekend!

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  2. Hi Stephanie
    When I was growing veggies, I had those same problems too. I still have snails now but they don't seem to attack non-edibles. I

    You are probably right about the weather too.

    Oh, my father's vegetable patch is also full of disease at this moment. Growing vegetables organically is really not easy.

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  3. Dear Ting,

    I have similar problem with pests when I grow chai sim & lady fingers in my garden. It attracted a lot of white flying pests that I suspect are mealy bugs. I didn't manage to eat much of the chai sim. I still have not thrown away my styrofoam boxes coz I have replaced the vegies with basils. But they don't seem to grow healthily lately.

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  4. JC - Basils are quite easy to grow. They need sunlight and well drained soil. Best thing is they don't attract pests. What I do when mine gets too straggly is cut the upper half of the plant off and let new leaves grow.

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  5. Have you tried permaculture methods for reducing pests? I'm no expert at all, and have just looked at this recently, but the idea is to grow prest-repellent plants alongside the attractive plants - lavender, basil and citrus (I think) repel insects, marigolds repel underground worms (nematodes) etc. Also plants that attract lady-birds, which eat these pesky critters! It might be worth looking at?

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