Summer Solstice

According to Wikipedia this year's solstice was on the 21st of June and it was the "official" begin of the summer. My peppers finally blossomed and I was waiting to get more peppers and earlier than last year. I still hand pollinate them as on this high floors bees or the like are very scarce, on the other hand, Ana's tomatoes just need some wind...


We were having some bugs attacking our crops, specially the parsley, celeriac and the peppers. I took a picture of them and then tried to find something similar on the web. I was also looking for advice on how to biologically get rid of it, since we actually intend to eat our products we didn't want to used any harsh chemicals. The appeared to be an Aphid, but I was not sure it looked more like this one. Here's a picture of a celeriac leaf with the pest.

As with all my plants problems I called mum and dad, experienced "farmers and plant growers", for a cure.... And they delivered, mix the ash of a full ashtray with water, mix it well, filter it through a cloth, put it in the sprayer and "splash them all".
As we are not smokers, I asked Tiago to collect his cigarette ash.. He definitely is not smoking that much (which is very good for him!), this was what he collected in two weeks.


I mixed it with water, filtered it through the cloth, then place it in the sprayer and off I went... A lean, mean, bug killing machine.

Two weeks after, the plant is alive (although the leaf in question has almost dried) and the bugs are gone!
Just great! Many thanks to Tiago, "without whom none of this would be possible" (sort off :-).

Meanwhile my carrots are also growing steadily, some of the tops are popping out... can't wait to get them out... but I need to leave them by one more month...