Our First Pests and How We Handled Them

Uh-oh. I went out to weed the garden again (there's a lot of that) and found a slimy little friend -- a slug. You can see him in the photo below.

Our first "visitor"

Luckily, I work at a restaurant that has hard boiled eggs on the menu, and the cook likes me enough that he saved me a batch of the shells for compost. Instead of throwing them in my composter, I rinsed them, dried them, then stored them in an open container in my garage. If they are rinsed out, they won't attract bugs or flies, and nothing will mess with them. But you must make sure and rinse them out well -- I rub my fingers around the insides to break the membrane and get rid of all the slime -- you can't just rinse them with water, rub your fingers around inside to get all the egg residue off, or you'll have flies and bugs all over them quick. They also smell, so store them outside in a garage or on your porch. I've read a few places where people recommend boiling the egg shells in water then drying them to sterilize them. I've never done all that, and I haven't had any problems, yet.

I was reading an article by Mother Earth News, http://goo.gl/XcT3PO Learn How to Grow Spinach,  and it recommends pulling back the mulch, which I haven't done, yet. I'm hoping the egg shells work.

Another article I was reading reinforced my usage of egg shells for slugs and snails:   http://goo.gl/welsJp.

The Farmers Market

Add crumbled egg shells to deter pests

Saturday, Ryan and I went to the farmers market to buy tomato and pepper plants for the garden. We wanted to go early in case the heirloom varieties are scarce in the coming weeks. We didn't want to miss out. We won't plant them until mid-May. I have a couple friends who swear by the Mother's Day rule, which is to obviously, plant on or around Mother's Day.

We bought four different tomato plants, three types of bell peppers (orange, red and green), two small jalapeño plants, a thyme plant and a Siam basil plant.

Our farmers market finds

The tomato varieties include Sweeties, a bright grape tomato with high sugar content and firm texture. Early Girl is a popular early slicing tomato, your typical medium-sized red tomato. The one I'm most excited about is the Black From Tula, a large purple/black heirloom tomato. The description says it's been said to have the best flavor of all the dark tomatoes, with "a rich, old-fashioned flavor that's sweet and spicy," according to the Tomato Chooser app. It also says the fruit can be as big as 8 to 14 ounces, so I'm especially excited for this one. And finally, the orange Chef's Choice tomato, which is a hybrid variety that reminds me of the Early Girl, only orange.

So, now we have a table full of plants, and I may need to transplant a couple of them, but this way I knew I could have a variety of locally grown produce to put in my garden.

Also, the lady who I bought the Black From Tula and Sweeties from was able to tell me where she bought her seeds and everything. That's what's great about buying local. I also found out that she and her husband live a couple blocks away from me and mine, and they sell beautifully rich compost by the gallon. If we bring our own container they will sell it to us for $1/gallon. We have our compost started, but it won't be good until next year, probably, so we definitely took him up on that offer. The plan is to add it to the soil when we plant the tomatoes and peppers here in a couple weeks. The woman said even just adding some to the tops of already planted plants will perk them up immediately, so I may add some to my spinach and see what happens.

I recommend heading to your local farmers market like we did, and talking to people. You can really learn a lot about your area that way, and maybe you will be lucky like us and find some cheap nutrients for your garden. I knew buying tomatoes from these guys would be a good idea since they obviously had plenty of rich compost to use.