Out with Aphids and in with Flea beetles.

My second round of eggplants are now being full-scale assaulted by flea beetles.  It seems like the organic soap spray I doused them with has eliminated the beetles on the plants in the back yard, but the ones in the front are now being feasted upon as well.  I hadn't looked too closely at them in a few days, so several leaves on each plant look like some jerk sat in my yard and poked the crud out of them with sewing needles.  I tried to manually squish some of the little bastards to be a warning sign for the rest of the flea beetles, but they just hopped away while giving me the buggy-finger.  Hopefully the thorough dousing in soap spray puts them in their place.  Mwahahahahaha...

On the plus side, the ladybug release has seemed to eliminate the aphids from the garden entirely.  The number of holes being eaten in my bean and pepper plants by mystery bugs has also decreased greatly, which is comforting because the beans were looking pretty questionable a few weeks back.

I couldn't bear thinning every single broccoli, so I saved one in a bucket.  It's the last on the right here and seems to be doing well so far.

The pepper bed is lush and green and seems to have recovered well from the bug that was eating holes in the leaves.  I won't be putting down straw since it just makes it harder to weed.

The space miser plants have produced two squash that ended up being unpollinated.  I cut them off today and will be watching the bee status of the garden a bit more closely.  This might just be the result of not having a male flower at the time, though it does worry me that I got rid of almost all of the pretty flowers that bees like in order to make room for more veggies.

I thinned the pan patty squash down to three pants and the cucumbers down to two plants per spot.  The royal burgundy bush beans are nice and bushy, so I hope to see some flowers soon.

This one kohlrabi is way bigger than the others.  No idea why.

My tiny pepper!  Last year peppers were one of the latest things to set fruit.  Expect new pictures of this guy on a semi-frequent basis until he's ripe...