Perhaps the supermodel analogy will help? Just like a woman does not need to look like a supermodel to be beautiful, your garden plants do not need to be pristine in order to be good producers. Free your mind from the shackles of advertising! ;) There really are a small number of pests that are common and damaging. And even the ones that are damaging need to show up in large numbers to be worth getting upset about. You will be exhausted in short time if you allow yourself to get upset at every hole you find in a leaf (especially since not all holes are caused by bugs) and every insect you see. Take it more like the justice system- the insects are innocent until proven guilty. Which means catching one in the act before deciding it is a problem. This will also save you a lot of money. I do not view bugs as nasty, dirty little things, but more fondly. They are amazing little things, very much alive and following their own purposes. Some are incredibly beautiful, and all of them are amazing. That last picture you have is a moth coccoon (technically a pupa). You can actually see the transition from caterpillar to winged insect in those, it is very cool. I do get rid of insect pests on my plants, but not from an emotional, angry place. Like with weeds, I do it because it must be done to get the plants to bear food for me. I'm not saying you need to think fondly on insects like me, I'm just putting out my way of thinking because it is different. Cheers!

Update: PEPPERS I think I caught the bacterial leaf spot on the sweet and hot bannana, pimento, hab, chile, tabasco, cyanne peppers quickly enough to get a crop. I had enough hot bannana and jalepenos to can 4 pints last Saturday. That was the first picking just to get them off the plants to help the new growth. They are blooming and setting peppers pretty well right now and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the copper is working. I'm backing off to two weeks between treatments and at half the rate unless the BLS really picks up again. The bell and Big Bertha peppers are probably shot, still stunted and still can't shake the BLS to any extent. Not setting fruit. Only time will tell now and maybe the hot weather in the weeks to come will help. TOMATOES Tomatos still have every disease in the book. I've started eating fried green tomatoes and canning green tomato relish thinking that nothing will make it to ripeness. I've got some very large green maters but the vines and foliage appear to be headed for a dirt nap and may not have enough left to support them to getting ripe. Stink bugs are crawling around. Aphids are finally dying, they've eaten themselves to death. My ladybugs never showed up even though they 'say' they were sent on 6/27. Learned a lesson on that one. ZUCS AND SQUASH The SVB's have taken 20% of the plants, suprised they haven't taken more. I've killed 5 of the moths in the past 3 weeks which means they probably layed a gazillion eggs before I got to them. Powdery mildew is in check for now. Removing leaves and spraying has again helped. I've developed a taste for patty pan squash and they are prolific producers. CUCS Stink bugs are running rampant. I'm gonna hit the plants with some insecticidal soap today. All in all I might get enough cucs to can if they will make it another 4-5 weeks. EGGPLANTS Now that there is some hot weather they've started putting out very well. The ichibons are gonna be the first eaters as usual with the regular ones to follow. OKRA The Clemson Spineless is really slow cause I screwed up and planted them in the wrong place, another experiment gone bad. Not enough sun. The Chinese Running Okra is vining it's way to finally start producing. Takes forever but the tasted is worth it. FERTILIZER I finally broke down and used Miracle Gro. Had to get some stuff to the roots quickly in hopes that part of the problems have been nutrition. I thought I had enough stuff composted in the soil this year but girlfriend finally talked me into trying the blue stuff. It appears to at least have temporarily picked up the growing and lessened the yellow leaves. Heading to the ag ext office for a soil test kit next week. Haven't had one since 2004 and I have a feeling sumpin isn't quite right. BRUSSEL SPROUTS Cabbage worms and harlequin bugs finally did them in. No amount of spraying could keep them out. That's all for now. If anyone knows a plant biologist or anb insect freak, they are welcome to come over to the house. I've got a whole college course on diseases and pests over here.

I learned that regular irrigation (rain) and lower temps make a BIG difference in production. I got more of everything- tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, green beans, cow peas, etc. I learned that throwing a little money at the issue can sometimes make a big difference. Due to gall bladder surgery in Feb, I didn't start a single seedling. Transplants cost a little, but this year it was well worth it. I also hired a few teens to help move the horse manure compost and dig it in. I learned what a big difference one more bed- even a small one can make in spacing. I learned that cattle panels DO work for trellising tomatoes. Just don't wait to long to tie up the new growth. I learned that there will always be a problem (2nd year in a row) with the stove at the height of peach and tomato canning season. I learned a camping stove will work for canning. If you leave the lid on the water will boil, but not if you leave it off. I learned I need to learn more about maintaining a camp stove and how to id problems. I learned it is much easier for me to do canning in small batches. I learned that straining the peach solids out of the peach mash for jam and cooking down the liquids, cooks the jam much faster and tastes AWESOME. My neighbor thinks it is awesome too- which is really good since I really like getting his peaches to can. I learned it takes a daily survey of the harvest, but it is possible to minimize the fruit flies from the produce I haven't had time to process going bad. I learned keeping all my miscellaneous garden items in good organization makes me a lot happier and lot less stressed. I learned to get much better at putting things away. The morning and evening strolls to survey my "queen-dom" (as my DH says) are much more fun. There were some ups and downs this year, and a few crop failures. Overall though it is the best gardening year yet. Andria

Well, I hope that someone found it, bought it and took it home with them where it hopefully is someplace warm and frost-free/freeze-free. My big tomato plant is happily residing upstairs in the spare room right beside a south-facing window. I talk to it, thump its blossoms and check its soil moisture daily. A couple of lady bugs that were attempting to overwinter by hibernating in a corner of the spare room woke up in Tuesday's hot weather and now are climbing all over the plants in the room. They must think it is Spring. I do hope the folks at Home Depot in Gainesville brought in all those plants from the garden center or covered them up with a very heavy-duty frost blanket row cover because they had hundreds and hundreds of plants in stock over the weekend. If they had moved the plants, shelving racks and all, someplace indoors it would have filled up an entire 2-car garage with little room to spare, so it was a substantial number of plants. . And, those are just the vegetables, fruits (strawberry plants) and herbs. I'm not as worried about the shrubs and perennials they had on display. On Tuesday it hit 79 degrees at our Mesonet station and 77 degrees at our house, and it didn't just feel warm, it almost felt hot. That sort of weather could give a person planting fever. The bees and the wasps were swarming all day. This morning, though, reality returned and it was 26 degrees at our house and 23 degrees at our Mesonet station this morning around sunrise. Gainesville is at a higher elevation so they might have been slightly warmer, but probably not by much. Our weather is nuts. We've had more than the usual number of grass fires the last couple of days, which is par for the course as winter deepens and fine fuels like grasses become more cured following freezing weather. I'm surprised how many plants have popped up in stores across the state this past week. Even some cool-season plants can freeze or suffer damage with temperatures in the lower 20s, especially if they just came out of a climate-controlled greenhouse before they were shipped to the stores. I just don't understand why so many stores so far north have so many plants. Of course, the stores are happy to sell the plants. And, for the folks who buy those plants and put them into the ground too early, the stores then will happily sell them replacement plants. It is a great business model for the stores---the more plants they sell early which then freeze, the more plants they sell later to replace the frozen ones.