Gardening, upkeep and bugs

I like growing things. Particularly things I can then eat. Herbs are nice (since they aren't quite as maintenance-hungry as fruits and veggies) so I've had a nice sized flowerpot herb garden since we moved into this apartment. Also, my most recent additions were a set of six tomato plants from Karl's dad (a farmer) that are just about done producing - they're plum tomatoes (about the size of an egg), with thick skins since they usually are for canning, but great flavor. My current herb list is: variegated and regular mint, spicy basil, curly parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano and dill. Oh, and the Jalapeno plant - which is approaching another harvest; time to make more salsa!

I live on a second floor apartment with a north/northeast facing covered balcony, so sunlight is at a premium - the plants tend to stay clumped in the eastern corner to get the most sunlight. This places them right over the landscaping bushes down below us. The bug infested, moth infested, fungus infested bushes. (Can you see where this is going?) So we've had a bit of trouble, particularly with mealy bugs. Normally, they're mostly just a pest, but they've attacked my sage and tomato plants in droves, causing the leaves to die. They look just like the picture - so imagine my sage and tomato plants, only with those little guys literally peppered all over the stems and leaves, with bundles of them in waxy sticky piles at the joints. ick!

Now, Karl's dad is a farmer - aka a bug-eradication-specialist, particularly when it comes to plants, so we called him and asked for advice.

Suggestion 1: soak them. They breathe through their skin, so suffocate the buggers and they'll go away. This worked pretty well when it was a minor infestation and I could get to all the bugs. That lasted about 2 weeks.

Suggestion 2: Neem Oil - a contact pesticide and safe for humans, also suffocates them. Worked better than just water, but not that great.

Suggestion 3: Pyrethrin - ooooo... this works good! you can spray them and watch them shrivel up and die! except... there's still more of them. and more and more and more.

Ok - so apparently the bastards lay eggs on the undersides of plant leaves, where it's hard to get them off. So now I need to find a pyrethrin pesticide (safe for food-plants), and add some dishsoap to it, and drench my plants with it. Of course - I keep getting re-infested from the plants downstairs, so it's kind of a losing battle.

So today was doom day on the porch: I totally axed the three worst looking tomatoes, and kept the two best and the one with three tomatoes still ripening on it. Also took out the totally eaten nasturtiums and pruned the sage pretty heavily. The rosemary also needs pruning, but I think I'll wait to do that. Found a spicebush swallowtail caterpillar on the dill (that's probably a good thing, since butterflies like healthy plants, but he still got relocated downstairs), and generally gave everything the onceover and then fertilized and watered well.

Have some of the sage currently soaking in soapy water to kill the buggies so I can dry it and use it. Will probably give the rosemary prunings the same treatment. Damn bugs.

Dinner tonight will be mustard pork chops with baked crispy cabbage; there's frozen fruit that will hopefully be "semi-thawed" for dessert with icecream.