Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Friendly Crawlies & Onion Mysteries

My my, it's been a little while since my last post!  I must watch that.

I made an exciting discovery in the garden a little while back.  I was completely horrified by these creepy crawlies that I'd never seen before:

    LBnymph

I mean, really, how creepy looking is that thing???  I killed 3 or 4 before I thought, hmmmm, let's go google the description and find out what the heck these things are.  It took forever, but I finally found out that they're ladybug nymphs!  That's right, these ugly little suckers are baby ladybugs, which are excellent pest control for which many organic gardeners pay good money!  So I called a truce, and I have been quite happy to share my patch of earth with these ugly little beasties.  I've even seen a few full grown lady bugs around, so my garden is getting a little additional pest control until these babies turn into speckled aphid munching machines!

See?  Not all creepy crawlies are bad.

The onions, in the meantime, keep me guessing.  I've never grown onions before at all and I chose what I thought was supposed to be a globing onion (I got the set from the farmer's market and they're called "candy"), but they looked more like scallions when I purchased them and I'm not seeing globes when I push back the soil.  I don't know.  I do suspect the kids planted them too deep, so maybe the globes are way down there.  I think I'll just dig one up tomorrow and see if there's a globe at all.  I'll be a little let down if it turns out that they were merely mislabeled scallions, but I must admit that the tops do look particularly green and tasty!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Definitely creepy. I'm glad you thought to look them up!

Anonymous said...

I'm not a fan of bugs at all but I'm diggin' on the colors of it. =) And your Strawberry looks delish!

Elizabeth said...

Seeded: I'm glad too!

Jen: They do indeed have an interesting pattern. And the strawberry was soooooo good! Every time I eat a garden strawberries, I wonder why the sad supermarket imitations can even legally be called strawberries. ;)