Organic Farming is For The Birds

So I've made the attempt to become a gardener. I think I've mentioned it before how I think that most people have the innate desire to grow something. Something primal in us wants to create something and provide for ourselves.
DE gave everyone a bunch of seedlings to plant this spring. I brought home two tomato plants, several collard greens, several brussel sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower. I also sprouted a few pumpkin plants and some beans in pots. The plants less the tomatoes, two collard greens and the aforementioned beans went into my very tiny gardening plot next to the black raspberries that I only just discovered when they were getting ripe.
And as mentioned previously, too, the plants that were in the garden except for the pumpkins were eaten by a rabbit not once but twice! The pumpkins were left with plenty of space to spread out. In the beginning of July, I had a small pumpkin growing and growing and growing. Its nearly ripe now and I estimate it to be about twenty pounds. I'm planning on harvesting it this weekend. Then providing that it doesn't rot before then, I'm going to enter it for better or worse into the Jamestown Community Fair.
Unfortunately, I didn't do much in the way of preventative medicine for my plants. I gave them plenty of Miracle Gro in the early days but now the pumpkins are on their own for watering.

Here's my pumpkin just days till harvesting. 

One of the first problems that I noticed with my pumpkin plants was powdery mildew on the leaves. I did some reading on the subject and found that it was often from high humidity and the leaves not getting sufficiently dry. We had a really humid spell but I think the biggest problem is that my gardening plot stays shady for a prolonged period and allows for the mildew to set up. I did some further reading and read that a mixture of milk and water sprayed on the leaves every three days could treat the mildew once spread. I did not however read the directions well enough and thought that it was sprayed daily for three days and not every three days. That explained why my leaves were getting sort of yellow and trying to die. 

Powdery mildew wasn't the only problem that I had with the pumpkins. I've also had a recent outbreak of squash vine borer bugs. Here they are hanging out on my second pumpkin. And below that are the eggs. 

And finally, what might actually be the most tragic are these giant holes in my beautiful pumpkin. They've been there from the beginning and haven't seemed to affect the pumpkin's growth or health. They are sort of soft but not really rotten. I hope bees don't fly out of them or something equally horrible.

The other plants haven't been free of problems either.

In my awesome wisdom, I decided that the five gallon buckets used for the tomatoes didn't need to be completely full of dirt so I put a gallon milk jug in the bottom to take up some room. While this was a great idea at first, when you have four foot plants loaded with tomatoes, it doesn't hold up. My soil has been leached of nutrients and daily is leached of water. Enter blossom end rot. 

The collard greens in the pot have been attacked not once but twice by very hungry green caterpillars. Yuck.

And even my beautiful impatiens in the front flowerbed have given up. They've gone from full and lush to leggy and translucent. 

Next year...chemical warfare.