Garden woes

Note for my students: notice my use of modals

This weekend I worked on our yard and garden. Because I've been busy lesson planning and grading the past couple of weeks, I haven't tended to my garden very much. In order to keep it healthy, I realize I have to not only water it when the soil gets dry, but I must also pull weeds right when they start to pop up and keep the bugs off as well.

I've done a good job of watering, but when I took a closer look at my plants, I found two different kids of insect eggs on the leaves. I should have paid more attention to those bugs! Luckily, I killed the eggs before they hatched. I could have had more insects than I wanted in a couple of days! After removing the eggs, I sprayed my garden with some vegetable safe insect killer. Hopefully that will keep the bugs away for a while.

When I went over to my friend's house yesterday and looked at her garden, she told me to watch out for the Japanese beetle, so when I got home I went out to my garden to see if they were in our yard too. I didn't find any on my garden, but I found a bunch of them in the bushes not far from my garden. I will have to keep an eye on them so they don't attack my garden. My husband thinks we should buy bug bags to hang in our yard to kill them. If we don't do that, by the time we want to eat our vegetables, we may not be able to.

Here are some pictures of the Japanese beetle and the damage it has already done to some of the bushes.