Pea moth larva
Last week I found a terrible beastie in a pea pod. It’s a horrible looking little beast that makes opening each pea pod a bit of a risky venture. I did a little research and found out that this hideous creature is the pea moth. Looks like I’ve got some pea moth management research in my future. The good news is that not every pea has a moth. I’d say about one in ten pods is infected, so I do still have a good number of peas that can be eaten.
Lovely peas without larva
Peas without larva taste (and look) so much better in a fresh home-grown salad.
Grapes growing on the patio pergola
In the vastly more pleasant category, we’re going to have a good grape crop again this year. I see many bunches of grapes forming on the pergola. They should be ready by the end of the summer. Sorry for the wacky photo angle!
Fresh blueberries
Also in the pleasant news category, the blueberries are in full production mode now. We’re finally to the point where the kids can’t keep up with them and I can pick bowls of berries to bring inside. Yum!
Shiro plum in late July
I’ll leave you with our crazy-productive plum tree. This tree produces a huge crop of plums every year. Luckily, the plums are great for jam. We especially like golden spiced plum jam, which I’ll make again this year. The plums should be ready in the next week or two.
Happy gardening.
Sandy
The 10 Year Challenge 
Ewwww! I’ve been taking pictures of pests all summer and was going to do a post about it tonight. I’ll link into this if I don’t forget by midnight…Your harvests look great! I can’t wait to have bigger blueberry bushes.
I know. Isn’t it horrible looking? You should see what it looks like when I zoom in on the original image. Ack.
ACK!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Pea moth??!?!?!?!
If you are a close follower of my blog (thank you for the comment, by the way! I love hearing from people. congrats on the sungold!!!), then you know that my achilles’ heel is all things moth. I do believe that if I found one of those in my pea, I just might DIE. You also may have noted that I was hit with a similar problem this year myself – only much less mothy, thank you very much – pea weevils. I seem to have beaten them now and am just starting to pick peas, when I learn about the PEA MOTH? Geez. Can you tell me if you can tell that the caterpillar is in there before you open the pod? Or, do you have to be surprised each time?? Also, what about snow peas and snap peas where you don’t actually open the pods. Could you bite into one accidentally, or would you be able to tell it’s in there and avoid that horrifying fate? If you can’t tell, I don’t know that I can eat my peas. I’m too scared… Plus I ate a few shelling peas yesterday and some were lovely and sweet with a tiny burst of bitter and I immediately thought, “bug!” Like, maybe one is inside the pea and I can’t see it? Poor, sad me!
On happier news, your plums look awesome! My plum trees are too young, but my neighbors have several that are usually chock full of jillions of pounds of awesome fruit and they share plenty with us. But this year (stupid weather) the trees are bug-eaten without a single fruit between them So, needless to say I’m jealous of your plums. Oh, and your blueberries. My baby bushes are giving me a couple of handfuls, and so I’m still having to buy them at the farmers’ market.
Happy cooking and canning! And here’s to an awesome upcoming tomato harvest!
~Lisa
Lisa, I can’t tell which pods will have them and which won’t, which is why it is a surprise. I don’t see any visible holes on the outside that they use to get in. They must enter the pod when they are super tiny. Sounds like this isn’t going to be the what you wanted to hear! 😉 Oh, about snow and snap peas. I don’t know if they are affected as well. I sure hope not!
That is a seriously ugly pest! Yuck! Even worse, to ruin some perfectly good peas is really the final straw. 😀
All your fruit harvests look great! I am totally jealous of your orchard and fruit production. Our normally modest fruit production is seriously reduced this year because my first crop of strawberries essentially wasn’t (due to the cold start to summer and what did arrive was gobbled up by slugs), the huckleberries and cranberries did not set any fruit (again I think the weather was the culprit), and my blueberries are fruiting and about to ripen up but birds got into one of my groups of bushes and seriously reduced my crop before I got it covered with netting. Arrrggggh! On a good note, the fall crop of raspberries looks like it will be excellent as will be the blackberries. All is not lost.
Laura,
Do you have any alpine strawberries? I use them for groundcover all over my yard, especially in the “ornamental” areas. They produce lovely little berries all summer long. I especially like the white alpines. Could be an easy way to have more fruit in your yard.
Sandy
I do not have any Alpines but I have lots of good candidate areas to grow them. I should get some growing. Thanks for the suggestion.