Detailed garden update.

 Blessings Darlings!

Today ... like most days this week ... the forecast has been 'today will be much cooler than yesterday was'.  Today ... like EVERY day this week ... the forecast LIED.  It's still hot and miserable out.

My plan in the garden this year was to try to match most of what the garden produced with the amount of veggies that we eat fresh, other than my experiments with growing potatoes and dry beans.  I'm doing okay at that goal!  Yay!  Not all of the success has been because I planned well, tho'.

We haven't gotten ANY tomatoes from the plants I purposely put in yet.  We're eating the ones off one of the volunteer tomato plants.  I have no idea what its genetics are, but it's putting out about 8 oz round fruit.  Hell, one of the plants I bought and planted (pink brandywine) hasn't even set fruit yet!

I've only planted two plots of green beans this year - we had WAY too many green beans for eating last year, and I didn't want to mess with canning them this year.  I only planted the second plot late, two weeks ago, so we've not gotten any from that plot.   But since I wasn't after beans-for-canning, I planted my favorite bush beans this year - Contender beans. Last year I planted my second favorite, Tendergreen beans.  Both produce for a longer period of time than green bean varieties for selling or canning, such as Jade.  Now every few days, altho' I expect that patch to be played out, I still harvest at least a pound of beans.  ALMOST too much for us.  The second plot has half the number of plants in it (and can be protected from frost, since I did plant them a little late.)

When we get a cool day, I'll harvest the potatoes, and evaluate that harvest.  I put in 15 seed potatoes of Yukon Gold.  I'd rather have put in some russet potatoes, but this was the only option at the store at the time.  Things got SERIOUSLY sold out due to folks suddenly gardening due to Coronavirus this year!  I didn't to a great job of making sure that the potatolings were covered by straw to protect them from the sun over the season, so I'm sure that I'm going to have a problem with some of them being too green to eat (the green produces toxins), but it's still going to be interesting.

I lost the one grey squash zucchini to bacterial wilt, but got 3 squash off of it before it died.  The ONE yellow crookneck heritage squash has been producing more than we've been able to eat.  This is with using it for stir-fries, raw slices for dips, zoodles in place of pasta, and just cooking and eating it as a 'regular' veggie.  The plant is now dying off, slowly but very surely, so we won't be getting much more from it.  My husband is grateful for that.

Turnip and beets were about perfect.  Put in 12 or 15 of each of them.  Rutabagas ... I don't do well with those.  They didn't survive transplanting.  The 'volunteer' dill - I had one scrawny plant last year, so I just let it go to seed, and it gave me 1 plant this year - is doing well, but I'm letting it seed itself again.  If I get enough plants next year, and put in some Jade or other canning beans, I'll use some for dilly beans.  And maybe for dill pickles - this year I've not gotten any cucs yet but do hope I'll get a few from my late planting.  I've gotten enough basil for fresh use (barely) and to dry some for the winter, but not enough for the Spawn to make and freeze pesto.  Parsley has stayed alive, but not grown enough to harvest and use.  I've harvested lots of spearmint, oregano, thyme, and sage.  Rosemary is ... limping.  I'll be happy if it survives the winter.

The one bell pepper is doing okay, but not great.  The hot peppers are producing tons of peppers - I might skip growing them next year, and just smoke or dry these.  Next year I want more sweet peppers and maybe some shishitos, I really loved those last year.

General catching up

Blessings Darlings!

On top of the attention that I've been giving that latest 'list', life has been busy around here.  A lot of extra money came IN for a change, instead of going OUT, which is always nice.    I've been spending lots of time dealing with the garden - I'm being buried in yellow crookneck squash, and the beans are coming in from the first planting.  The second planting is being eaten, probably by voles, so I'm going to have to vole-treat the garden again.  Bacterial wilt has hit the grey zucchini and the volunteer spaghetti squash.  The potatoes are about ready to be harvested.  The Swiss  Chard is now at the point where it can handle all our sandwich 'lettuce' needs, and maybe an occasional salad as well.  Tomatoes are still all green, tho, and I fear that they are all determinant and will all ripen at virtually the same time. 

I need to plant the fall crops of beets, radishes, turnips, and rutabagas.  But it's really hard clearing nasty weeds when it's so hot and humid, and too much of my useful time is spent watering the other veggies. 

At dusk and near midnight (after the nightly offerings) I sit outside as much as I can, discussing things with the various Spirits/Gods/ancestors/etc.  Great stuff, but the pollen I'm exposed to then along with the pollen from the garden work has been killing my eyes.  I might be driven to allergy eye drops, but washing my eyes every few hours seems to at least make it less bad.

I'm seeing odd stuff in the skies.  One was probably just a satellite reflecting sunlight.  The more unusual was a 'fleet' ... well, 6 ... planes, not in formation, but 'in a row' over a few minutes around 11:30 pm, all flying west or west/southwest.  That's not normal, especially now with less air traffic.  It's not like I'm living on a flight path in and out of O'Hare any more.  It's not a normal thing here - and as I said, I'm out there every night watching the skies now. 

Why am I watching the sky?  Because we're in the summer meteor time.  Not peak Perseids yet, but it's time to start watching for them.

Life  in these unusual times keeps going on.  Statistics on cases and deaths from covid 19 are no longer being published by the CDC, and no one trusts where the data is now going to.  States are admitting to new highs in cases and deaths, but HHS (does it stand for the dept of Health and Human Services or Happy Horse Shit?) claims that both are not increasing.  Okay, Boomer.



Most jobs lost due to Coronavirus shut downs are not coming back.  This is the last week when unemployment is being supplemented with Coronavirus stimulus money of $600 a week.  That's been making a huge difference in my financial life, since I only get $170 a week from unemployment.  Since the Chubby Hubby is over 70, he's getting social security retirement money, but that doesn't pay all our bills.  With the 'regular' unemployment, there will be a gap between income and what we have to spend each month.  We have the savings to cover that for rather a while at this time, fortunately.  I really do NOT want to work again until it's actually safe to do so.  That isn't going to happen for ... quite a while, I fear.  I'm sure we don't have that much money saved.

There are still protests daily over the police killings.  The police have responded by calls for them to stop being abusive by increasing their abuse of citizens.  And teaming up with Federal hired hands to dole out even more toxic gasses and 'non lethal' weaponry.  It's a shit show.  Mayors who aren't reforming their police force complaining that the Feds are attacking protesters ... when the feds are doing exactly the same things that their own police have been doing. 

While all this is going on, and I'm writing e-mails and calling congresscritters, I'm still sitting in my back yard, watching the skies.  It's totally surreal.  Wars and rumors of wars, but not where I am.  Mind you, the next city over, Martinsburg WV, has had monthly protests for YEARS now, over the police shooting of a schizophrenic black man there.  So it's not FAR away from me.  Links to the story below - the courts have finally done a little (the ending of qualified immunity is BIG).  But it took over 7 years of protests to get this far.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/family-of-man-fatally-shot-by-police-reaches-35-million-settlement/2020/07/21/da918e9a-cb6c-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/u-s-appeals-court-rejects-qualified-immunity-in-police-shooting-writes-this-has-to-stop/2331918/  

I wish I felt that things would improve soon.  That a safe and effective immunization would be found fast for the pandemic.  That institutionalized racism would be dealt with.  That the police would be reformed and get the KKK out of their ranks.  That we'd get a sane and honorable president.  That people would get science savvy and not be dickheads.  I just don't see an end to this shit show.

Welp. that's it for now.

Frondly, Fern

Zuke Problems!

Blessings Darlings!

I've had several weeks of being buried in zukes.  This has been a good thing for me.  But ... now not only have some low-level problems with squash bugs started (and I think THEY are rather under control), but wilt has hit.  I removed the plant with that, but ... I'm worried it will take out the other two in that hill.  And that it will move to the gray squash in the next hill over.

I'm debating starting more grey squash in a new hill to get me to full summer squash power, but they'd have to go in the area I planned to put my fall greens/radishes/turnips in. 

With the beans being so bad this year (I'll be applying BT to those this evening, if the wind is calm then), and the tomatoes being so late (my fault), the zukes have been our main veggie.  Without them ... mostly I'll just be getting herbs and spices from the garden.  Which will leave me sad and lower on money, since I'd have to pay for veggies. 

On top of that, something has eaten leaves from some of my cucumber plants.  So even THOSE aren't about to bury me. 

I'm beginning to think I need a larger garden, as well as the energy and time to work it more.

Oh well.

Frondly, Fern

Squash Plant Pests

Blessings Darlings!

Lately lots of folks have been blogging about their plans for their upcoming gardens, and sighing about he bug-based problems they encountered last year.  I know that my neighbors and I had LOTS of problems with our squash from bugs, both from them simply sucking the life out of the leaves and from them turning the vines to mush.

Now, unlike my  neighbors, I DID get a really good crop before the bugs toasted the squash plants.  But my squash season ended earlier than it had to.  I don't want a repeat of that.

This year I plan on dealing with the insect problems better than I did last year.  Which is why I've been researching the problems and solutions NOW.

VINES TURNED TO MUSH

The biggest problem, which killed the plants totally, was that the vine turned mushy not far from the roots.  So mushy that the vine literally detached from the roots!

Cause:
I knew that this was a result of squash vine borers in the stem mucking about first, and now know that the mucking about allowed the vine to get infected and turn to goo.

This year's approach:
First, I'm going to plant the vines farther apart - I had them too close last year so I had a hard time finding and treating ANY problems, as well as a hard time harvesting!  

The vine borers like the first foot or so of the vine, I will check it often for signs of rot.  If there IS rot I'm going to cut into the vine and squish the borers, then work on re-rooting the vine farther along it's length.  Like about a foot farther down it's length.  To do this I'll anoint the vine with rooting hormone and mound earth over that part of the vine, topped with some compost or plastic to help keep it moist.  Once new roots form I'll cut off the vine on the 'old root' side of the new roots, to try to keep the rot away.

University of Illinois - where I was an agriculture major - says that the ONLY pesticide that squash borers are not immune to is carbaryl (I have NO clue what that is), and to try applying it once a week.  I'm not trying that myself.

SUCKING BUGS ATTACKING LEAVES

We had a really nasty infestation of these, but while they reduced harvest they didn't kill the entire plant.

Cause:
 We had two different insects at work here in the Mid Atlantic:  regular old squash bugs as well as stink bugs.  They act the same, they are treated the same, they even look pretty much the same - both 'shield bugs' type.  They have different colored eggs, but they are the same size, both lay 'em under leaves, and both lay them in the same pattern.

This year's approach:
First, since I've already determined to have the plants farther apart, I'll be able to check the leaves for egg masses better.  Once found, I'll squish those egg masses!  I may put boards down for the bugs to gather under and squish them there, too.  Yes, both types of insects CAN smell bad when squished.

I might also try diatomaceous earth on these buggers and see if that helps.    Pyrethrins are my back-up plan, if needed. 

BACTERIAL WILT

This wilt can kill a plant in 6 weeks, sometimes even before it fruits at all.  It's not a problem I've had ... yet.  But I'm preparing.

Cause:  
 A bacteria - but it's carried/spread by cucumber beetles.  Smalllish, striped beetles.  If you don't have the beetles you won't have the problem.

This year's approach:
Keeping alert for the beetles will be the first thing.  If I see them I'll probably do the diatomaceous earth, or if needed go for rotenone.  

 These are the main threats to your garden's squash supply.  With out them, two hills of zucchini will feed a small army.  With them, you may not get any zucs, let alone any more nutritious hard squashes. 

Frondly, Fern.