Bug Factory

You may remember last year,

we tried a little gardening.

Out of the hundreds of seeds,

only a handful survived.

Enough to fill our spot.

Beans sprouted early,

and we got enough to make one salad,

and a bunch to replant.

The sunflowers really shot up.

That's like 9 feet tall!

We thought we had the green thumbs.

Then we realized the hard truth.

We also built a feast for bugs and birds.

It's one of the fun things about gardening,

as certain plants attract certain insects.

I remember getting cool caterpillars 

from my grandparents tomato plants.

The bummer is these bugs are not cool.

The sunflowers had little nasty maggoty larva,

and the chard had some kind of aphid like creature.

I can see how difficult it is to grow organically.

The cool thing is it's been over a year,

and we still have stragglers continuing to grow.

The one carrot that survived,

is a huge seed making powerhouse.

Attracting it's own grasshopper,

that's been there for 2 days now.

The clear winner is the kale.

There are 3 or 4 plants in here.

They are resilient to bugs,

and don't wilt in the heat.

Good times...

TP