Happy Saturday! Come on in or rather, let’s go out and tour the garden.

I don’t share much of the ugly sides to the garden, so here it is, I have been dealing with an aphid infestation since late February and early March. From year to year, I will usually have aphids but I don’t think I’ve ever had it this bad ever.

It makes my skin crawl just to think about it but I have been having to deal with it on a daily basis when I go out to harvest the vegetables I would have for that night. I wonder how farmers deal with this sort of thing, when they would dunk the vegetables in freezing cold water multiple times to make sure everything is clean, except in my case, it’s never clean. The water will be this aphid-riddled soup.

Yuck!

I do not know what’s going on this year.

I’ve tried Just about every method out there to get rid of them but so far, nothing worked, not even insect powder and sprays. I finally made the decision last night to rip out the lettuce and spinach, as much as it pained me to do so. I guess now, I can put something in that won’t attract aphids.

I looked up on the internet, an aphid infestation can be caused by either stressed plants or plants being over-fertilized. Over-fertilized? All I’ve been putting in is organic slow-release and I put that in months ago. Is the soil this rich?

Maybe it’s the weather? I

Mother Nature has been throwing a lot of curveballs lately – warm 10-degree-Fahrenheits then, bam, the temperature comes tumbling down 20 degrees. I can certainly see why plants are stressed, I’d be stressed, too.

If you ask me whether all this causes me to give up gardening, I’d say I thought about it but then when I look at all the blooming flowers and all the delicious and unique vegetables I get to have, it make me believe the somehow, some way, this problem will resolve itself.