Quite an incongruous headline, but it includes just a couple of the topics today in the Lewis Ginter Community Kitchen Garden.

A beetle is riddling the amaranthus volunteers (Redroot Pigweed variety) with holes, while leaving the bush beans. Great. Unless the beetles move to any of our other vegetables. So what’s the actual threat? It seems to be a Pigweed Flea Beetle (Disonycha glabrata). A little research indicates D. glabrata feeds almost exclusively on the Redroot Pigweed.

We also yanked a handful of radishes today. The radishes weren’t grown for yield, but as markers in the rows for our parsnip seed. The parsnips are up, the radishes were getting big, so we yanked them. I think the example bodes well for root crops in our wheelchair-accessible raised beds currently under development.