A Whitefly Christmas

I always though it would be a lovely thing to experience a white christmas but this was NOT what I had in mind. The past few weeks has seen an invasion of whiteflies in the garden which have decimated the tomatoes and zucchinis. I tried spraying with white oil at first but when it wasn't making the tiniest bit of difference I resorted to squashing the little buggers and all their eggs and larvae by hand. Every day for a week combing over each and every (remaining) leaf on the tomato plants finally did the trick and the plants seem to be recovering. I did however lose all but one zucchinis and a lot of the foliage on the tomatoes died off. On the upside (?) , I am learning more and more about garden pests! While I was battling the invasion outside I started raising some more tomato seedlings so although it will be even later hopefully we will still get a decent amount of tomatoes. So far I have counted less than a dozen developing on the remaining plants and most of those are only a couple of mm in diameter but growing fast now the plants are recovering.

These are the previously massive and lush tomato bushes, now climbing up the hot north facing wall with the help on some twine.



















The two biggest of the baby tomatoes. I think this is the Grosse Lisse plant. I thought it was the Roma but obviously not by the shape of the developing fruit.




























The one remaining zucchini with some of the new tomato seedlings.














More tomato seedlings with the baby sweet basil.



















The lemons are slowly getting bigger and it has just finished a second round of flowering resulting in more baby fruit. YAY! I will have to pick some off if they all survive and keep growing but I will wait a while for that.














And just have a look at this passionfruit :D We need to put the next piece of lattice up around the corner so it has something to grow up! It is sending shoots out both sides now. The ones against the house I will train with string but I think we need something more solid for the front!














And lastly here is the whole garden shot. Less in the way of bushy tomatoes but still going fairly well especially the mulberry which is almost as tall as me.



















Oh and the last bit of news... I have started my Permaculture Design Certificate :D I am doing it via correspondence through Permaculture Visions. I finally decided to go ahead and do it, using money from the savings account. Now I just need to get through the xmas/new years period so I can hunker down and get to work!

Step lightly and take care :)

Em