Vegetable Gardening: October 2nd

Today definitely was not the most fun I've had in the garden. It took me seriously forever to do everything that I had to do. I started with weeding. There wasn't really that much to weed but it gets tedious. Then I sprayed my plants with pesticides. I sprayed my tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and squash with Neem and everything else with Thuricide because it had chewing. I also had to re-fertilize everything in my third row (zucchini, squash, okra and peas) and my beans because they were starting to look a little yellow, which we learned in class is from a nutrient deficiency. I also had to basically rebuild my row things because the rain eroded them away. That took FOREVER and when I went home I literally had dirt everywhere. Like in between my toes, all over my legs, under my nails and even on my face. I also, some how cut my finger in the worst possible place. It's basically a flap of skin now and it's super annoying to type.

Everything was bigger in my garden this week. I was most pleased with my tomatoes. They are kinda huge and are blossoming. I was super disappointed when I saw my pepper plants, though. They had a lot of chewing on them and I noticed that everyone else's had blossomed and one persons already had a little green pepper. My carrots are showing now. They're super cute, although I thought they were weeds at first. My peas are also showing.

As I mentioned before, we talked about plant nutrients and nutrient deficiency in class. There are three essential plant nutrients: environmental, macro and micro. They are all equally important. The environmental nutrients make up about 95% of the plant. They are carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Macro nutrients are phosphorus, potassium, calcium, nitrogen, sulfur and magnesium. Micro nutrients are iron, zinc, copper, manganese, Mo (don't know to say or spell it), boron and chloride. We also learned that the optimal pH for plants is about 6.5. From what we learned in class I'd say that my okra has a Nitrogen deficiency because the older leaves are yellowing. To fix this I fertilized since that is basically what fertilizer is.