Last Ditch

For the last five or six years I have pretty methodically started tomato and pepper seedlings in Jan/Feb. I’ve had excellent harvests, even in off years, but a recent lapse in routine reminded me of one of the golden rules of gardening. That rule is, you need to be checking on things constantly. Leaving your garden chores for a few days or a week, especially when growing seedlings, invites disaster.

It’s disaster that I now face. Spring is always a busy time but after not really doing much besides keeping an eye on the watering of my seedlings, I finally noticed that a number of the pepper plants looked to be in pretty dire straights. Looking more closely, I saw tiny black bugs covering their leaves and leaving tell tale traces of their eating. I’m still not sure what they are (smaller than aphids) but my guess is they are the larvae of the tiny gnat like flies that seem so attracted to damp soil. A recent visit to a local greenhouse confirmed that copious use of yellow sticky paper helps avoid this issue.

Although I have tried to control the flies with sticky fly trap paper, it appears their offspring have had a field day. I’ve been able to reduce the damage by carefully rubbing the bugs off the leaves with my thumb and forefinger. I’ve placed the plants into more sun and they have perked up a bit. My worry is that the plants don’t sufficiently recover by the time warmer weather arrives.

I share this seedling calamity to remind myself and others that there’s always a myriad of things that can go wrong. The quicker we can jump on a problem, the sooner we can avert damage. Having routines in our gardens means problems don’t have the same chances to escalate and worsen. At the beginning of the growing season, this has been a painful but valuable reminder. Gardening and growing food is an opportunity to slow down and appreciate the process and work we put in. When we disrespect that process, we end up running after problems.