Aphids and Squirrels and Rain...Oh My!

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We had squirrels digging in the garden, mind you they are not eating anything, just digging holes and digging up carrots, cilantro, and basil. We are prepared to hang the lovely aluminum pie plates that make racket, and it might work if we have jumpy squirrels. Problem with that is we have city squirrels! Other than removing squirrels I have read ther eis not much you can do. Once they find a good place to dig and hide things, thye come back over and over and over. Since we have been in the midst of monsoon season for a couple weeks, the squirrels are staying away. Which is good, except all the rain is causing a couple of crops to get that "over watered" look. Most of my cilantro and parsley kicked the bucket (over watering, they had rot at the base of the plant) and I am in the process of figuring out what I can replace it with. I may go to a nursery and see if I can purchase some. The melons look yellwed at this point and we may lose those as well. They love the rain when they are fruiting, but not when they are still seedlings.
And then the aphids...
before we got all this rain my tomato plants and a couple of the shell bean plants had aphids. Little evil looking black aphids. The best defense is ladybugs, so we went to Sumner to see if my parents still had them hanging around the house. Nope. The are overrun by ladybugs in the cold months, but nothing when I need them! So I tried out an organic method where you use a concentrated garlic spray by boiling garlic cloves in water and letting it sit, then apply with a spray bottle. I probably should have added some mild soap as well. It did not take them all out, but definitely decreased their numbers. A secondary plus or minus depending on who you are, the backyard smells like garlic, tasty. I will visit my favorite gardening store Paris Farmers Union this weekend and see what they have to offer.
Now if this rain will let up for a couple of days everything is going to go wild. I am excited to see the results!

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