I planted Yukon Gold potatoes  in my garden this year.

To encourage all my gardener friends out there to try growing potatoes in  their gardens as well, I had a post on how to grow potatoes.

Today I wanted to update you on the current status of my potato plants.  They are about 15 inches tall now, and starting to form flower buds.

I would also like to remind you to check your potato plants for Potato Beetles, because I found about 10 of these little guys on my plants, and a couple of leaves already had eggs laid on them.

Most of the time these little pests are not very visible, since they tend to hang under the leaves, to eat and to lay eggs.

They have to be removed immediately, and destroyed.

Since I keep my garden organic, I do not use any chemicals, so  I hand picked them off  (gloved of course), placed them in a plastic bag, squashed them, and discarded the whole package in the trash.  I was not going to leave even the squashed ones near my garden, in case any of the eggs were still alive.

I also, removed the couple of leaves with the eggs on them, which are orange in color, very tight together, about 1 millimeter long, and planted perpendicular to the leaf surface.

If you do not spot these early enough, they will grow very quickly into a salmon color larvae, eat your potato leaves, and mature into full grown beetles.

Remember my self-seeded tomato plants , well, with the warm, rainy weather, they are doing very well.

Since they were self-seeded from fallen down tomatoes from last year’s crop, they grew in clusters, and now I replanted them to give them more room to grow to maturity.

I have about 12 free Cherry Tomato plants in my garden this year…lots of savings… as these are always quite expensive at the grocery store.

I will keep you posted on the progress of my veggie garden, throughout the growing season.

Please share your gardening stories.