My beautiful pumpkins...

What's chomping on my pumpkin??

It's a narsty black squirrel!

And it's left my pumpkin hollow. :(

Moral of the story: Don't grow food in the city?

Real moral of the story: Be vigilant. I wasn't.

Chard chomper & second bed

I noticed today that my Swiss chard seedlings were actually starting to get cut off at the base, just above the root. At first I thought it might be another case of damping off, but upon examining the soil close to the stem I caught a little larva-like critter red-handed. I did away with it appropriately (flicked it with my finger to nowhereland). A cursory Google search suggested it might be a darkling or rove beetle – assuming I lived in Arizona.

Whatever pest it may be, I figured the best way to handle it was to transplant the seedlings, seeing as their first true leaves (the leaves that grow after the seed leaves, or cotyledons) have finally appeared. But that meant digging a new bed, because I refuse to plant chard next to carrots and radishes if they're not going to benefit one another in some way (they aren't companion plants). So I double-dug a new raised bed in the backyard. It took a few hours, as I had to remove the plastic lining that lay beneath the gravel and penetrate the seriously compacted soil that it covered. Here is the result:

Into this bed I transplanted spinach and rainbow chard seedlings. To remove the seedlings from the flats, I used a short kitchen knife to help loosen the soil beneath them. Following the guidelines in HtGMV, I spaced the spinach 6 inches apart and the chard 8 inches apart in a hexagonal pattern (separately, don't worry). I realize now that I probably should have spaced them twice as close together and harvested the thinnings as soon as their leaves touched. I'll do that tomorrow. Immediately after transplanting, I watered the bed and sprinkled cayenne powder around them. By the way, I noticed that the radish leaves out front that had undergone extended contact with cayenne powder have started to curl. I'm trying to avoid sprinkling the powder directly on the plants now, which is much easier to achieve with 6-8 inch spacing.

Speaking of radishes, I thought I'd post a picture of how they're coming along. Note that the pattern would probably be flawless were it not for the rodents.