Another day in the garden...

Found this bugger eating my lettuce, I had to follow a path and dig down to catch him and boy its a big one, about an inch long! It is a grub of some kind - a larval stage of an insect. I'll be seeing it again soon at the expense of another lettuce plant because I somehow managed to let it escape!
I will do some online research to try to identify it. I now have the identity of the white ovoid eggs on my spinach... Spinach Leaf Miner! I have been keeping on top of them pretty well, harvesting the leaves with eggs on them, washing the eggs off and making a salad! Only 2 leaves had hatched eggs with the larvae tunneling in the leaves. Hopefully the flies stop laying their eggs at some point in the season, egg removal in the spinach patch has become a daily task.

What remains of the lettuce plant, the grub eats the base of the plant where the leaves join - destruction!

What remains of my broccoli patch, I've removed the maggots from this last one but its taproot is chewed down to a thread, yet it remains green and turgid, it just hasn't grown much since the maggots hit. I am leaving this one plant as an experiment to see if it will re-root from the buried portion of its stem. I have more unplanted broccoli for a second attempt, or I may plant a zucchini in this spot instead.

Lettuce before harvest May 26 2009

Bloomsdale Spinach

before harvest - Royal Oakleaf lettuce (bottom left) and Black Seeded Simpson lettuce (bottom right)

before harvest

after harvest

after harvest

after harvest

after harvest

Really windy today - blew the plants all down!

mmmm as fresh as salad can get!

Eat the spinach!

Goodbye!