We've been enjoying participating the the Children's Fall Vegetable Garden Program at San Antonio Botanical Gardens. This is a free program designed by local Master Gardeners. There is a $25 supply fee for the entire 16 week program. It's been very educational for us. We've learned a lot about soil and fertilizer. We're applying what we learn here to our own vege garden at home so we can be more successful with our garden.

If you're interested in learning more about this program, click here. The fall program is closed to new families now, but they do this every spring and fall. So, keep checking the educational events page here for information about new programs.

In the map to the right, you can likely barely make out the Children's Garden on the top right of the map. The rest of the map is of the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, which is absolutely beautiful. Not only is there a rose garden and areas that make you feel like you've stepped into the grounds of British royalty, there is a Japanese Garden that is lovely and peaceful, a huge terrarium area with exotic, rain forest plants to desert beauties, an area that represents the Texas Hill Country to make us feel right at home and if you're missing the East Texas Pineywoods... there's a home for you also. The pineywoods is our favorite area. There are tall trees shading the natural path around the small lake, water fowl and turtles and fish, some log cabins to bring you into history, and if you're a birder... this area attracts a wide variety of species.

So, coming back to the vegetable garden... Can you believe we've been out of the photo zone lately? I haven't taken a single picture of our garden and we've been at it for five weeks now. Don't worry... I'll get on it. My posts aren't nearly so interesting without pictures.
Blogger apparently doesn't love Microsoft Paint... it blurred out our garden plot here pretty good. Well, here it is anyway. From left to right we have brocolli, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber (my kids are excited about this... they adore cucumber), chinese cabbage, joi choy, beets, carrots, red lettuce, turnips, celebrity tomato, green beans, yellow beans, bulb onions, basil, cherry tomato, swiss chard, yellow squash (I don't know how on earth that squash is going to hang in the small area), bell pepper, kohlrabi and or course a couple of marigolds to add beauty and deter some bugs.

So, the very newest and more educational part of this was planting by seed, using Medina Organic Fertilizer and Hasta-Gro Plant Food. Did I mention that this is a completely organic garden? With twelve more weeks to go, I'm sure we'll pick up a lot more. My own garden gets out of hand and overgrown, so this will help us to figure out how to maintain a growing garden.

We get to harvest and keep all of our vegetables. We brought home some basil this week which I'll be cooking in my pasta sauce. Since there isn't much other than weeding and checking for bugs now, we'll get to visit with some special guests that will teach nature stuff. This week, we got to listen to a talk about Purple Martins. The kids also get to do a craft that is nature related. Good bang for the buck!

I'll take some pictures this Saturday to share with you all. Thanks for coming back to visit our blog page. I know we've been out of the loop with it for quite a while. Hopefully, I'll start posting more often again as we settle better into our school routine and start our nature walks again. Praise God for the rain and cool weather!

I love our garden, but so does something else... APHIDS! Wow, those tiny guys are a pain. The picture below is what the back of many of our cantaloupe leaves look like.
We've learned so much about gardening, including the fact that we have much more to learn. Did you know that ants farm these little creeps? Yep. They carry the little bundles of joy around and leave them in a nice location along the veins of the leaves. In return, they excrete a sweet substance that ants love. Next thing you know, your leaves are being sucked dry.

BUT... God did have a plan (surprise, surprise!). Aphids have many predators. One of my favorites is the ladybug.
Here are a few more that I discovered that like to dine on aphids. This is a Green Lacewing. I was thrilled to see some in my garden... along with their eggs!
Here's another... it's a Green Lynx Spider. The only problem is, they like to eat honey bees and other spiders, too. But, I figure they aphids are easier to catch, so they'll get more of those than the pollinators.
This is a predator that I've been wondering about. I just found out that it's a Long-Legged Fly. They're very pretty. Best of all through, they eat small insects! Yay!

Back to the ladybugs... because we all love them. So, how do we attract more ladybugs to our gardens? You can buy and release them in your garden, but how do you know that they won't all go straight over to the Jones' house next door? The answer is... we must create a happy home for them. Not only do they eat aphids, but they require a source of pollen and water. Who'da thought? (I didn't) And for goodness sake, no poison!

The most popular flowers they are attracted to have umbrella shaped flowers such as fennel, dill, cilantro, caraway, angelica, tansy, wild carrot & yarrow. Other plants that also attract ladybugs include cosmos (especially the white ones), coreopsis, and scented geraniums, dandelions.

I spray a little water over the leaved of my plants when I water just to make it plentiful. Next year, I'll plan on planting some of these type of plants around the garden. We only have two resident ladybugs that we're aware of right now. They're both Asian type ladybugs. We haven't seen a native nine-spotted ladybug yet.

There are many different types of ladybugs. All of them are beneficial. There is some concern that our native ladybug is disappearing, though. You can help Cornell University with their Lost Ladybug Project by going here: http://www.lostladybug.org/.

In case you aren't aware, these guys are also ladybugs. They're good... don't freak out! These ladybugs are in their larval stage and will become much more graceful at the end of their cycle.

Have fun with your garden! If you have any bug tips or hints, please share!!!

In the past month, we have found a couple of caterpillars that we decided to investigate. The first one we found was on my tomato plant. Bad bug! Well, he was so cute, we just put him in a butterfly box and fed him tomato leaves. He was a happy camper!



Sadly, I found out a little too late that this guy in particular needed about 2-3" of soil to pupate in. We could tell he was in search of something. He wasn't eating anymore, so we knew it was time for him to pupate. I looked it up and found that they need 1 part dirt, 1 part sand and 2 parts peat moss. Oops... We did our best to fill the bottom in time, but he didn't make it.

Well, this would have been the rest of the story. Tomato hornworms have a voracious appetite for... guess what? Tomato plants. So, it's good to get them out of the garden.

Once they have transformed, they become what many call a Hummingbird Moth because they are huge and fly around like hummingbirds.



Here's a neat site that shows their transformation.
http://mamba.bio.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/lepidopt/sphingid/ManducaSexta.htm

Stay tuned for the next caterpillar we are studying.

We finally decided to mess of the rental house by adding a garden. I didn't think we'd be here so long. I just have to plant something! I'll get some pics of the garden to post soon. In the meantime, we'd like to share something cool we found out.

I knew there was rotting wood under the area where I built up my bed for my vege garden. Well, in the mornings, we started to notice some suspicious holes that are about 1.5" in diameter and really deep. I was concerned because I knew there were large grubs deep down in that decomposing wood.I walked out tonight to leave some new plants out to plant tomorrow. I heard a little movement in the garden and guess what I found. All the little partiers were just coming out of their holes. Here's a female rhinoceros beetle. Big gal, huh?Thanks to our gardening yahoo group, I found more info on there guys on www.dirtdoctor.com. Here's what he had to say about them: