The Chinese Zodiac features various animals, each featured in a single year – Year of the Dragon, Year of the Rat, etc.  I decided that if our garden could best be classfied this year it would be Year of the Pest.

First we lost the cucumbers to cucumber beetles:

The plants do this, which is extremely depressing:

Then the squash died, courtesy of this guy and his friends:

His cousins were over visiting my lillies, eating the blossoms, leaves, stems…….

We sprayed the lillies, sprayed the leaves of the squash and cucumber plants and then eventually gave up and pulled everything up. And it had been quiet for a few weeks, so we thought we were doing okay, and we were looking forward to harvesting what was looking to be a banner year for corn.

And then, we were visited by these guys:

You really can’t treat for them because it will get into the ears, so we solved the problem by harvesting every single ear, checking them and separating them into buckets, then cutting down all the cornstalks from the first planting in an attempt to to try and save the next planting, which is both healthier and currently without any ears of corn.  We won’t know for a while whether it worked.

We were able to save about 2 dozen very small ears of corn, which we blanched and cut off the cob.  We got about 5 cups of corn, which I froze.  So we might have won a round against these bugs.

Seriously.  Year of the Pest.