- Carrots
- Scarlet Nantes
- Mixed colors (Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, Solar Yellow and Atomic Red)
- Turnip -- Tokyo Cross
- Parsnip -- Harris Model
- Daikon -- Minowase
- Beet -- Ruby Queen
- Leek - American Flag
- Onions
- Granex Hybrid
- Red Burgundy
- Tokyo Long White
The green beens I planted last week are starting to come up, though nothing else is starting to come up yet.
I've been harvesting kale fairly regularly and the okra has been producing every so often but I'm still trying to get the two plants to bush out a bit and produce a more usable amount. The few I am harvesting are being put to good use, though. The leeks are doing very well and I've been harvesting them every once in a while. I harvested the second to last bok choy and had it for dinner last night. Time to plant some more.
The turnips are still doing well and giving me a good harvest. They seem to being storing well enough by keeping them in the ground.
My tangerine tree in the front yard is still producing. I harvested a basketful of them yesterday and will be using them for juice over the next week or so. The orange tree is also still producing, but not as prolifically.
I was out getting ready to harvest the evening crop and saw a Chinese dwarf banana leaf all curled up. I had heard of caterpillars that did this but hadn't seen one yet.
This is what the leaf looked like:
I separated it from the main leaf blade and I must say, the workmanship of the little bugger is impressive. The rolled up portion of the leaf was about 7 inches long:
The caterpillar seals the top edge. I haven't researched how just yet, but it does a good job of things. Almost like origami:
I unrolled the leaf and found a big, fat, white caterpillar. It was ghostly white with a dark head and soft and squishy and covered with a white powder. Looks like a big, fat, powdery grub.
It is a banana skipper (Erionota thrax) and though its main host is banana it is also found on bamboo, Manila hemp, coconut, and other palms. Additional hosts recorded in Hawaii are Canna, Strelitzia, and Heliconia species.
Luckily, there are some predators found in Hawaii. The egg parasite, Ooencyrtus erionatae, from Guam and the larval parasite, Apanteles erionatae, from Thailand, were introduced to Hawaii to biologically control the banana skipper. Four additional parasites have been found in Hawaii. They are the egg parasites, Anastatus spp. (Euphelmidae) and Trichogramma spp. (Trichogrammatidae), and the larvae and pupal parasites, Ecthromorpha fuscator (Ichneumonidae) and Brachymeria obscurata (Chalcididae), respectively. These four parasites contribute to the biological control of the banana skipper but exhibit less control than the first two introduced parasites.
These predators keep populations down and keep banana plantations safe. I just squished the things.
After playing biological control agent, I went around and harvested for dinner and this week's lunch. For dinner I harvested my first large batch of yard long beans from the most recent planting and a few snow peas. Both are just now coming into production, but the yard long beans are more productive at the moment. Rounding out the dinner collection was my last bok choy and few okra.
I pulled a carrot and a turnip, harvested a bunch of lettuce and herbs (basil, sage, rosemary, shiso and red rumex) for this week's lunch salads. I also gathered some collards and kale to bring to someone at work. I picked a bunch of green tomatilla but since I have a bunch of salsa verde already in the freezer I'll probably bring those into to work as well.
I was out getting ready to harvest the evening crop and saw a Chinese dwarf banana leaf all curled up. I had heard of caterpillars that did this but hadn't seen one yet.
This is what the leaf looked like:
I separated it from the main leaf blade and I must say, the workmanship of the little bugger is impressive. The rolled up portion of the leaf was about 7 inches long:
The caterpillar seals the top edge. I haven't researched how just yet, but it does a good job of things. Almost like origami:
I unrolled the leaf and found a big, fat, white caterpillar. It was ghostly white with a dark head and soft and squishy and covered with a white powder. Looks like a big, fat, powdery grub.
It is a banana skipper (Erionota thrax) and though its main host is banana it is also found on bamboo, Manila hemp, coconut, and other palms. Additional hosts recorded in Hawaii are Canna, Strelitzia, and Heliconia species.
Luckily, there are some predators found in Hawaii. The egg parasite, Ooencyrtus erionatae, from Guam and the larval parasite, Apanteles erionatae, from Thailand, were introduced to Hawaii to biologically control the banana skipper. Four additional parasites have been found in Hawaii. They are the egg parasites, Anastatus spp. (Euphelmidae) and Trichogramma spp. (Trichogrammatidae), and the larvae and pupal parasites, Ecthromorpha fuscator (Ichneumonidae) and Brachymeria obscurata (Chalcididae), respectively. These four parasites contribute to the biological control of the banana skipper but exhibit less control than the first two introduced parasites.
These predators keep populations down and keep banana plantations safe. I just squished the things.
After playing biological control agent, I went around and harvested for dinner and this week's lunch. For dinner I harvested my first large batch of yard long beans from the most recent planting and a few snow peas. Both are just now coming into production, but the yard long beans are more productive at the moment. Rounding out the dinner collection was my last bok choy and few okra.
I pulled a carrot and a turnip, harvested a bunch of lettuce and herbs (basil, sage, rosemary, shiso and red rumex) for this week's lunch salads. I also gathered some collards and kale to bring to someone at work. I picked a bunch of green tomatilla but since I have a bunch of salsa verde already in the freezer I'll probably bring those into to work as well.
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