July 2nd: Aliens invade the garden

I suppose it was inevitable... 

Some undesirable has been digging through my new lettuce beds 

(part of Test Bed 2). 

What would go after a few tiny seeds like this? Squirrel? Raccoon? Klingon? 

I’ve patched the bed together; we’ll see what happens next. 

More aliens...

Squishy little mites or something have attacked the eggplant.  

Interestingly, the majority of the mites were found on the eggplants  in the ‘Water Only’ and the ‘MiracleGro’ boxes. Very few were found in the ‘Better World’ box.

I’m not sure why this would be the case, since all three boxes are side by side. (See below). 

The Better World packaging claims “...improves plant resilience...”. 

I guess this is what resilience means. 

I’ve dealt with the leaf mites by cutting away the heavily-invaded leaves, and spraying the remainder with diluted dish soap.

 Meanwhile:

After 38 days, the strawberry plant on water only has finally flowered. 

The MiracleGro strawberry plant finally has new fruit coming in (for an eventual second harvest).

And the strawberries on Better World are far ahead on their second growth cycle.

 As for the eggplant hatchlings...

Eggplant on ‘water only’ is larger than the MiracleGro plant. 

MiracleGro eggplant. 

Eggplant on Better World is doing very well! 

 Flowering on all three jalapeno pepper plants, 

but most apparent in the ‘Better World’ box. 

For those of you following the beanstalk story... this pot on Better World is filling out nicely, and starting to flower, in spite of the over-crowding stress test I’m putting it through.  

And finally the figs. Coming along slow and steady....