Moringa trees are spreading everywhere!

Like a bad remake of the movie ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, a little known plant is showing up in homes all over southwest Missouri!

Why, I myself have two plants growing even as I write this tome. Looking back, everything is a blur. I’m not sure where the seeds came from. Possibly from the depths of space! Arriving from the dark void these seeds have now discovered the earth!  Today, I just heard of another residence a couple of towns over with the SAME EXACT TREE growing there! Those poor fools! You see,I could have tried to warn them, but I’ve lost the will. I should have stopped the critters early on when they were tiny, weak and frail. Now, they are so very large and imposing. Did I mention they talk to me inside my head? More and more it’s their thoughts I hear. Not mine. It’s their bidding I do now. One plant has even begun to look familiar…a mini-me with leaves. Just yesterday, I caught myself watering my feet! (Actually, it felt refreshing...).

Now, these insidious diciduousi are appearing in other places, other towns. Perhaps even in large cities. (I’m sure LA is positively crawling with the things). Wherever they’re found, they continue to grow at phenomenal rates as their green little twiggy bodies greedily suck in the pure virgin air of earth. I tell you, I’m losing sleep. At night...in the dark. As I lay in my bed. I can hear them in the next room making little wheezing sounds (bronchitis perhaps)? Whatever…. I digress

Take heed my friends before it’s too late. If you see strange little green plants growing on a store counter or in a neighbors yard. Call the authorities and report them! Then run…run...run!

I have to go now…my plants are calling.

Sometimes they get it right!

On beans and beetles!

Even though it’s still mid-winter, I’m making my plans for a successful spring and summer garden. I’ll need to plant and work smart because just under the surface of the grass outside there are thousands of problems biding their time.

Every year now, for the last few seasons, Japanese beetles have made their appearance right around the first week of June. This is also the time of year when many of my garden vegetable groupings are young, succulent and the most susceptible to insect attacks. One of these will be a large planting of pole and bush beans, which by June are normally just getting ready to produce bean pods. Turns out they are also a favorite food of this beetle.

Known scientifically as popilla japonica, these pests originally arrived on our east coast sometime in the early 1900’s and have been spreading westward ever since. These days, you can find scattered throughout much of the Midwest. The beetle that is about 15 millimeters (0.6 in) long and 10 millimeters (0.4 in) wide, with iridescent copper-colored elytra and green thorax and head. It’s not very destructive in Japan, where it is controlled by natural enemies, but in America it is a serious pest of over 200 species of plants, including; rose bushes, grapes, hops, canna, crape myrtles and beans of course.

I have literally had an entire crop reduced to stubble in just a few days after a horde of beetles descended upon them. And while most insecticides will work on them, who wants to spray poison on their plants? Hand picking is another option, but it’s a pain. So, what else is there?  Plant early and cover!

By planting your beans as soon as the soil hits about fifty five degrees, you can get an earlier than normal start on a bean crop before the beetles even awake from their winter slumber. That way, by the time they are out and about, you have a healthy group of plants that can endure a lot in the way of damage. But, as they say in the commercials, that’s not all! I also like to use a very thin material called reemay to cover all my crops, not just the beans. This material is so light and transparent that it does not impede growth, but which is a very effective barrier to all sorts of nasty insects. It’s also relatively inexpensive, so I use it to also cover just about everything I can. By the end of June, the beetles are gone and so off come the covers.

Last year, when I did this, I was able to enjoy great production with everything I planted excepting the tomatoes. Those guys have always been a challenge for me to grow well.

Moringa plant: Day 21

While it’s been only a few weeks since my first Moringa seedling first poked through the soil in the small peat pot I had carefully planted it in on December the 17^th of 2010, it sure has made up for lost time.

Today the plant stands at nine and a half inches with nicely developed leaves. Let’s see, that’s close to half an inch of growth per day by my calculation. Not too shabby.

Moringa plants: Day 11

I now have three seedlings growing; two that came up on Dec 30^th and one that was planted later and came up on the fifth.

Of the two earlier plants, one is healthy and one is so-so. The healthy one is currently six inches high and has nicely formed leaves. The other one is lagging behind and as you can see has more poorly formed foliage. I’m not sure why one is some much better than the other as they were planted in the same soil and exposed to the same amount of heat and light. My thinking is it may just be a question as to the vigor of the original seed. The youngest plant is still too small to tell how it will turn out.

All three are receiving about fourteen hours of light generated by two florescent tubes in my kitchen. From time to time, they also get a couple of hours of bright light from a 250 watt sodium discharge bulb.

The one plant that is doing so well has also been transplanted to a larger clay pot. When this was done on January the 9^th, I removed about half of the peat pot to allow the roots a little more room to grow.

I’ll try and do another update toward the end of January on this most interesting of trees.