Yesterday we harvested all our potatoes that we planted back in August 2009. We’d been waiting patiently for the plant to die back before harvesting but it just kept on growing and growing! As it was our first time growing potatoes I was so interested to see what was actually going on under the soil. We weren’t blown away by the yield but pleasently surprised for our first attempt. We didn’t get any growing up inside the tube of straw like we were hoping but had a reasonable number in the soil. We also harvested our firt shallot.

This morning we harvest our first eggplant, another zucchini and a large handful of cherry tomatoes.

We’ve also discovered that we have some bad beetles enjoying themselves on the leaves of our eggplants and pumpkins. One beetle has done a bit of damage to our eggplant (see photos) and we found 3 little patches of eggs under the leaves. I’d seen the beetle last week but left it to see what would happen because I wasn’t sure if it was a good beetle or a bad beetle – turns out it was a bad one. Still there was only one full-size beetle so we killed it and then sprayed the rest of the plant with pyrethrum.

The other one we found when inspecting the pumpkins & zucchinis for any others. It’s a different type of beetle and from some web-searching I think it is a pumpkin beetle. Again we only saw one and just killed it, however these beetles lay their eggs in the soil we don’t know if there are more on the way yet – we’ll have to keep an eye on them.

Our pumpkins are also covered in helpful lady beetles so want to be careful in using the pyrethrum if we can avoid it. If anyone has had any success with other solutions or useful companion plants please let me know! It also seems that once the pumkin vines are mature they can outgrow the beetles anyway so hopefully they won’t get out of control.

Many of the seeds sown last weekend have also germinated – 3/4 snow peas, 5/5 climbing beans, 8/9 corn and 5/6 bush beans, and 8/8 for both types of broccoli in the seedling trays. No signs of life yet from our carrots, parsnips, onions or celery.

Our recently purchased seedlings are now well established – pepino is on the brink of flowering, the marigolds have new flower buds forming and the peppermint and chinese licorice have lots of healthy new growth.