Checking out the garden last night I was horrified to see all these little bugs on my potato plants.  At first I thought they were Lady Bugs with a quick glance, but looking closer I realized they were the pesty Colorado Potato Beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) larvae.

I had read about the potato bug in the past while researching garden insects and pests, but this is the first in 3 years growing potatoes that they showed up.  A quick look through google nested some interesting sites for information.  Here are a few:

• Colorado potato beetle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Colorado Potato Beetle: Organic Control Options
• PotatoBeetle.org

I'm not interested and never used pesticides in the garden, so was looking for a natural control method.  From what I've read about many different options, but these make sense to me:

1. Manually go through the garden daily or even twice daily and pick the potato beetls into a container with soap and water.
2. Can use 100% Neem oil as a diluted spray.  Neem oil is a natural control and works by discouraging the potato beetle from feeding, but not directly killing them.
3. Attract or bring in natural biological predators for your garden such as green lacewings, ladybugs, predatory stinkbugs and spiders.
4. Use BT (Bacillus Thuringiensis), which is a naturally occurring bacterial disease.  It's available as a spray solution at your local garden center and is effective in killing potato beetle larvae, but not as effective on adults.  Best to use if you catch early.

Since I only have a small patch of potatoes and am outside daily, I decided to just check a couple times a day and manually pick them off.  Some are in pretty bad shape so I hope I caught them in time.  Would hate to not have fresh garden potatoes this year and into the fall.

I'd love to hear how others go rid of these buggers.  I haven't personally tried the Neem oil or BT, but that would be my next move.  I also practice crop rotation to reduce the chance of recurrence... but I'm also looking into what I can do to the soil to possibly eliminate or reduce the change of them coming back next year in that bed.

This year we planted pole beans and Oregon giant snow peas where we had planted potatoes last year.  It's a small plot, about 15 feet long by 5 feet wide.   I wasn't sure what to do for the beans to climb.  Last year I tried a tee-pee with miserable results.. my own doing.  I didn't stake the tee-pee in the ground properly and we had a rain storm with some heavy gusts just when the pole beans were getting going.  The wind tipped over the tee-pee and we loss pretty much everything as it ripped the plants right out of the ground.  Wasn't going to go through that again ;o)

This year my son saw a picture of a tent style structure with garden netting on it so we decided to build something similar.  Easy to build and fun too... we just went to the back of a dead end street and cut down some alders.   I sharpened the ends and put them firmly into the ground and used screws to hold them together.  We kept it like that for a couple days, then decided to pin it down with twine to keep it steady... didn't want this one blowing over.

We kept it like that until the pole beans and snow peas were about ready to start climbing.  We added some garden netting held down with some zip ties I had laying around.  So far so good... We hope this one keeps up and it's nice because we can easily reach both sides for the pole beans and the snow peas on each end.  The only issue we had is at the beginning, birds would get caught under the net and fight to get out.   We had to help a few out actually, but that doesn't seem to be an issues now that the plants are higher then the bottom of the netting.

On the side of our house, between the house and the driveway, we have a small strip that was once a flower bed.  It's about 20 feet by 3 feet roughly.  Last year we ripped out the flowers, yes they're pretty but not edible, and planted 4 raspberry bushes and 3 blackberry bushes.  Before you yell as us for pulling out nice flowers, they were transplanted out back about the garden to attract bee's, hopefully ;o)

We already have a great 3 year old black lab who is trained not to dig and listens well.  We got a second pup black lab... well I don't need to go into the gory details, but only 1 blackberry bush survived.  After morning the loss and trying to figure out what to do with that space, I thought of planting some tomatoes we started from seed.  These are doing great, but do require more watering then out in the garden.

This space is south facing, which got me thinking of putting up some cold frames and try for winter greens after the tomatoes are done.  I salvaged some old sliding window panes and have some access to free left over lumber, so just have to come up with a game plan to build them.  Let's see how the tomatoes do first though.

The raspberry bushes have more then doubled since last years planting and look very healthy.  They seem to love it there and hope to get a good pick this summer.  The one blackberry bush that survived is thriving... so we'll see how this tenacious one does this summer.  It's sitting between the tomato plants, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing, but so far so good.

Been busy couple weeks at work and coupled with the snow I just can't wait for Spring to come around.  I'll be picking up my seeds probably next week and within the next 2 weeks, start some seedlings indoors.  Visited the local nursery and they still hadn't put out the Veseys Seedsyet, but should be out next week I'm told.  I might just order them online...

I thought I would put some of my work conference call time to good use and draft up what our new raised garden beds would look like in Excel.  It's not pretty and things will not be planted as shown in the image, but setting it up this way will allow me to easily move things around.  Still have some reading to do an beneficial/companion planting and aligning to the sun.  Looking at the image, East is the top of the beds and West is the bottom.  The right side length of the beds will face South.  I have to confirm the number of seeds per square, per vegetable type as well as I only used one reference online but it didn't seem that accurate.  Once it's all put together proper, I should be able to calculate by function the number of total plants per type and benchmark yeild, etc... ya geeky, but it's a start ;o) 

I had to buy a few more training books for work so of course bought a treat.  I figure after toasting my brain on Windows 2008 Active Directoy Configuration (yes it's as exciting as it sounds), I thought I should reward myself with some good reading so included All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! in my order.   Talk about "one of these things are not like the other..." (if you ever watched Sesame Street you get that ;o)  I had the original edition from the library but had to bring it back before I was done since someone else had it on hold (good for you!!).

So the plan is to study, finalize selection of seeds, start seedlings indoors and complete the plan for the new raised garden beds, almost in that order.  I'll be pricing out the Hemlock that I'll use for the beds once I calculate how much I need.  Also have to start looking for my options on materials to create my own versions of Mels's Mix.  I won't have enough compost to do all the beds so have to find some alternatives.  I can get loam and peat moss perlite at good prices, but good compost in bulk might be hard to come by in the quantities I'll need to kick off all these beds at once.  Still researching at this point. 

So as this is posted it's another snow day here (30cm of the white stuff) and seems like Spring will never come, but it will and I can't wait!!

Gardeners of all levels can benefit from composting and creating that "Gardener's Black Gold".  There are many different methods of composting and although most of us know we throw in green waste such as garden clippings and kitchen scraps with brown waste like fallen leaves in a pile then we get nice compost, do we really know how composting works?  There are many different methods for composting and each have their pros and cons, however the process of decomposition is the same for each method at the core.

Decomposition of organic material is a natural occurrence.  When leaves and plant life fall to the ground in the forest, teams of micro organisms break down the plant material into smaller and smaller components until the end result is nutrient full material called humus aka compost.  The humus returns the nutrients back to the soil for other living plants and trees until they die off and the cycle continues.  This is the natural cycle we want to escalate by creating the ideal "meal plan" and environment for these micro organisms.

As soon as you start your compost pile, millions of bacteria and fungi start the process.  They break down the material feeding on the carbon for energy and nitrogen to build protein in order to multiply.  All this work creates heat and the pile will heat up.  As the compost heap heats up, the bacteria and fungi that started the process will begin to die off.  This is a good thing because each stage of decomposers work within specific temperature ranges and when they die off they become food for the next stage of decomposers and so on until the job is done.

Bacteria that start the process are called Psychrophilic bacteria and are most active about the 13°C (55°F).  They do function below this temperature but in increasignly slower rates until the freezing mark at which point decomposition pretty much ceases.  The Psychrophilic bacteria are there to do the prep work and get the pile up to temp.

The next stage kicks in with Mesophilic bacteria.  Mesophilic bacteria does most of the composting work between 8°C and 50°C (46-120°F).  These guys produce acids, carbon dioxide and more heat until they create an environment they can't live in and die off for the next stage of bacteria.

At this stage, Thermophile bacteria comes in and feeds furthering the decomposition process.  This is the last stage in bacteria and fungi process.  The ideal temperature at this stage is 50°C-90°C (120-194°F).  The Thermophile will work at the pile until there is no more material left for them to break down, at which point the heap temperature will start to drop and the maturation stage starts.

The maturation stage is what we can see visually when we turn the compost pile.  We see larger organisms like worms, ants, centipedes, millipedes, etc...  Once the pile is completely broke down where you can no longer recognize any organic material and the compost has a nice earth smell to it, it's finished and ready for the garden.

It's worth noting that the stages above are in perfect composting conditions.  Our backyard compost heaps will rarely get to the high end Thermophile stage.  This is why it's not recommended to compost diseased plants, dairy products, oils or animal materials, which require a constant temperature of approx 60°C (140°F).   Even without reaching these temperatures, our backyard heaps will break down nicely, just take a bit longer.  Our job is to help speed up the process by giving it exactly what it needs Oxygen, Organic Material and Water.

The various stages obviously don't happen all at the same time within the entire compost heap.  Heat will build up from the core of the heap and propagate outwards, but we speed up the process by turning the pile about once a week.  Turning the pile adds oxygen and distributes the heat throughout the pile evening out the decomposition process.  It's also important while turning to verify the moister of the pile.  Rule of thumb is it should be as most as a wet sponge.  If it's too dry it slow down the process and if it's too wet it will invite anaerobe bacteria which causes a smelly compost pile.  If it's too dry just water it down and check it again the following week when you turn it.  If you live in an area that gets a lot of rain it would be beneficial to have your compost pile up off the ground, like a pallet bin propped up on cinder blocks.  This will ensure proper draining and a tarp on top of the pile will stop it from getting too wet.

Composting is one of those things that can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.  For me, I started small with a home made pallet bin, but as my experience is growing, I'm going to build a 3 bin so I can create more compost easily.  You don't have to be fancy, you just have to start ;o)