Hi Michelle - Welcome to your first year of gardening! First, did you harden off your seedlings before planting them in the ground? If not, your first task should be to search on "hardening off plants", very important. If you didn't gradually adjust them to the outdoors, your wind damage and wilting could be from moving the outside too quickly. As for the bug: definitely NOT a squash bug. Even blurry. The body shape and posture remind me of one of the flies. I can't think which one at the moment (and can't find my book), but that fly is either a good bug or a harmless one. For the leaf damage/holes, my guess would be slugs. With the rain, they have been atrocious in my garden. Go outside at night with a flashlight and check under the leaves. I used an iron phosphate based bate (Sluggo, etc) for the first time this year. It's organic, safe around pets and should only kill the slugs. Or, you can try cat food cans with beer. They love beer and drown in it. The small white spots could also be flea beetles. The more people I talk to in the Philadelphia area, the more stories I hear about really bad flea beetles this year. I should know what the white stuff is. I know I've seen it before. An chance of getting a less blurry picture? It can be tricky unless you have a macro function on your camera. My gut instincts are saying the fluff is from one of the trees that are pollinating right now. Just a note about your squash: it does not transplant well if the roots are disturbed, especially if it is big and root bound. You could try to transplant yours, but you may just want to direct seed in the garden. Good luck! Bellatrix

Toom, how many PO's do you have? Are you growing several pots? One thing you can do regarding space is, pot all PO's in one big not huge pot..Then either hang or set plant on its own shelf as a centerpiece, (as long as it gets light) I prefer a fuller, compact look to skimpy. Toom, don't fear plants..If you'd like to grow various tropicals, start w/something simple, and there's many to choose from. This way, instead of hearing plants in store pleading with you not to take them home, they'll instead say, take me, take me..LOL. If you've good sun light, start w/cactus/succulents..They're easy to care for..and only ask for light and little water. But don't scare away from something as wonderful as growing plants..Toni

heres an article on onion thrips. The following article, by Professor A.M. Shelton of Cornell University, appeared in the March 2007 issue of Onion World and is reprinted by permission. Onion Thrips Scientific Name: Thrips tabaci Geographic Distribution: Worldwide. Found in most areas where onions are grown. Identification Immature: White to pale yellow in color, onion thrips in the immature stage are very small, usually 0.5 to 1.2 mm in length. These thrips have elongated, elliptical and slender bodies with dark colored eyes that are easy to see. Unlike adults, immatures do not have wings and, hence, cannot fly. Pupae: This is the intermediate stage between the immature and adult stages. Thrips pupae are pale yellow to brown in color and have short antennae and wing buds that are visible but nonfunctional. Eggs: White or yellow in color, eggs are microscopic and are difficult to see without the aid of a microscope. Females typically insert the eggs, one by one, into the plant tissue. Adults prefer to lay their eggs in leaf, cotyledon or flower tissues. Adults: Adults are about 2 mm in length and have fully developed wings that are fringed with long hairs. When at rest, the wings are folded along the back of the insect. Adults are pale yellow to dark brown in color. Host Preferred hosts are onions, garlic and other related plants. Onion Thrips also attack various crops including cabbage, cotton, celery, tomatoes, beans, cucumber and pineapple. Thrips can be found on almost any cultivated and weedy plants. Biology and Ecology Typical life cycle is 14 to 30 days, however, when temperatures are over 90˚ F, the life cycle can be as short as 10 or 11 days. Adults may live up to 20 days. Thrips do not need to mate for reproduction. Females that do not mate will produce only female offspring. Each female can produce up to 80 eggs. It is important to remember that a single thrips can produce a substantial population within a very short time. Damage Thrips can cause considerable economic damage. They begin feeding by piercing and rasping the leaf surface with their mouth parts to release the liquids from the plant cells. Later, they suck up plant contents. Thrips prefer to feed on the young plant tissue on the newest emerged leaves, so scouting for thrips should begin there. When the leaf grows, the previous damage produced by the thrips enlarges, leaving silvery patches or streaks on the leaves. Small black fecal matter is also commonly seen on the leaves. When damage is severe, these small patches can occupy much of the surface of the leaf and the plant cannot adequately photosynthesize. The plant loses more water than normal through the damaged tissue and plant pathogens can easily penetrate the injured plant. In severe attacks, the whole plant can turn white or silver and leaves can wither. In injured plants, bulb size is reduced. Thrips may also serve as vectors of some viruses such as Iris Yellow Spot Virus and other plant diseases, including the fungus, purple blotch (Alternaria porri). Control Onion thrips populations and damage are most severe during hot, dry weather. The reasons are that rainfall is normally a major mortality factor and more generations are produced in hot weather. The main method of control is the use of insecticides, but populations of thrips in some areas have developed resistance to some insecticides, especially pyrethroids. Best control results are obtained with an integrated strategy that includes making sure transplants are free from thrips, plots are planted away from infested areas, culls and volunteers are removed from the field (since they can serve as a source of infestation), and the plants are not stressed by other factors such as poor irrigation. Because of the occurrence of insecticide resistance in some regions, check with your local extension service to determine which insecticides might be useful in your area. It is best to rotate classes (i.e. different modes of action) of insecticides every two weeks to slow the development of resistance to any single class. Before using insecticides, use the economic threshold for onions in your particular area as a guide for when to treat. Modify the general treatment guidelines based on the weather, cultivar and market value of the crop. Special attention needs to be observed when the weather is hot and dry since thrips populations can explode. Due to growing insecticide resistance problems around the world, it is very important to use insecticides as little as possible in an IPM program.

Captain Dirt, I plant directly into the soil, planting shallowly because that is what onions prefer. I weed the beds about once a week for the first month or so. Then I add mulch, but I put the mulch only in the open area between the onions and don't have it up so close to the onions that it touches them. (In a rainy year, wet mulch in direct contact with the onions can lead to disease issues.) I usually don't put paper on the ground under the mulch in the onion bed beacause the onions don't like being covered up...the bulbs like to sort of pop up out of the ground as they enlarge and grow, and they grow better if you let the bulbs expose themselves, so to speak. I've tried growing onions every way possible, and leaving the soil unmulched right around the onion plant works best for me in my garden. Sometimes I have to pull out weeds that pop up in that open space, but it isn't that big of a deal and the effort pays off because onions that are shallowly planted and have the mulch pushed back a little from the plant do better than those that have mulch touching them. If I were planting the way you want to plant with paper under mulch, I'd cut an "X" in the paper where each onion will go and fold back the paper around the X so the paper doesn't lie back down over the soil. So, each X'd area is a little spot of bare soil. I'd put the soaker hose under the paper before planting. So, in order to plant, prepare your soil. Then, put down your soaker hose first and turn on the hose and run it while you can look at it and make sure it doesn't leave any dry areas. If it does, rearrange the hose. If you're going to use a pelleted fertilizer, put it on the ground as a top dressing, or mix it into the soil thoroughly as you prepare the soil, under the paper, but not where the X's are cut for the onions. You don't want granular or pelleted fertilizer that close to tender young roots. Put down your paper and use something to hold it down temporarily until you're through planting and can mulch. Plant your onions through the X's cut in the paper. Lay your mulch on top of the paper at least an inch thick, but leave the X'd area unmulched so the bulb can pop up out of the ground in a couple of months as it enlarges. Water the area well. After that, strive to get your onions an inch of moisture a week. Regularly weed and remove any weeds that sprout in your mulch or in the open soil next to each onion plant. Add more mulch as time goes on, but continue to keep it back away from the onions. In roughly 90-110 days (if you're growing here in or near Oklahoma), you'll have nice, big fat onions ready to harvest. Dawn