I planted my seedlings a little less than three weeks ago. Since January, I added a tomato plant and bell paper plant (bought from Home Depot for 97 cents, since I couldn’t get my pepper seedlings to sprout) and thyme and a lilikoi vine (from the dollar section at Punahou Carnival). I am happy to report that most all of my plants are happy and healthy.
Lessons from my first month: 1. I hate pill bugs! Early on, I had a rough patch with pill bugs. Pill bugs are the “rolly pollie bugs”. They typically live in cool, moist parts of the garden, but they LOVE pea and bean seedlings. They eat the stems right in half, so the entire plant falls over. I lost the entire “bush bean” square to pill bugs. It was all very, very sad. Supposedly, you are supposed to scatter “diatomaceous earth” around the garden and it kills the pill bugs. I couldn’t find this stuff anywhere (I checked City Mill, Home Depot and Walmart) and it sounded expensive, so I made plastic garden cloches out of old plastic water bottles. Thank you to “You Grow Girl!“, my new favorite book, for the idea. The seedlings are now protected from pill bugs, and the peas are starting to climb my makeshift recycled fence and PVC pipe trellis. It’s super cool. I had a wonderful crop of peas in Oregon, and I can’t wait for my first set of “Hawaiian” peas!
And 2: I didn’t know that Zucchini grew so large! Oh noes! They are thriving, but unfortunately, I planted them too closely together, and now I’m going to have to thin out pretty soon. According to the “square foot gardener”, you need at least 4 squares per zucchni plant! I must have misread this, and planted four per square! Epic fail.
Any suggestions for my zucchini? Let it go, and see what happens, or prune out all but the strongest two plants? It seems so harsh to prune, especially since they are doing so well….
