What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Beekissed]

Yesterday I put up a new garden gate, put a new landscaping topper to those gate posts and a new timber sill on the main gate.

This morning I started weaving my tomatoes through the cattle panels, suckered a few and removed squash and cuke beetles from the cukes...noted tiny cukes coming on the vines.

Everything is looking good right now except where the Jap Beetles keep chewing my beans and zinnias to death. Nothing stops those things...I've tried Neem, lime and pyrethrin dust. We never used to have them here but they suddenly appeared a few years ago and they seem to be multiplying in staggering numbers.

 

[ducks4you]

If you have chickens, you can knock them off into a bucket of water and feed them. They crunch REAL good!

 

[Beekissed]

If you have chickens, you can knock them off into a bucket of water and feed them. They crunch REAL good!

I've been using the traps and empty them on occasion for the chickens....a few will get away, but most are crunched up so quickly it's like magic!

I've seen the girls hunting around the traps too, chasing down the JBs and gobbling them right up. One hen was up on the Early Transparent apple tree yesterday and I know why she went up there...the JBs are chewing their way through that crop and she could get a twofer...bugs and apples!

 

[lcertuche]

I was out in the garden showing DH my plants when he said that my tomatoes needed tied up. He pulled at one and it flopped down and he saw the string I had it wrapped around. "Sorry" He was going to fix it and I said don't worry about it, I'll do it myself. This is the only thing he has done in the garden all spring, lol. Then again he stays pretty tuckered out working everyday and mowing our three acres. Not to mention brush clearing... Oh I wish my teenage son wasn't so lazy. My other one is down this week for the holiday and has promised to help me in the garden.

 

[Beekissed]

I think lazy and teenage boy are synonymous with one another. I had three. Every weekend I kept them busy and tried to do so during the week but I worked so couldn't stick around and drive that mule team.

It's a rare thing to find a teenager who is not inherently lazy...it seems to come with the territory.

Pruned the butterfly bush to remove dead heads, dead headed the other flowers, snipped a few things off the roses. Just my normal Sunday walk through, admiring the beauty of the flowers...while I take along a sharp implement to keep my hands busy.

 

[thistlebloom]

I got my veg garden weeded, and "hilled" the spuds up with straw. All that straw left over from last years fail has come in real handy this year. There are very few weeds, mostly in the rows where we cleared to plant seeds. But the aisles are weed free.
I had to weed the kids corn. It had a big infestation of bindweed. They had pulled it before they planted, but you know how bindweed is and I couldn't let them do it or the corn would also have been decimated.

Gave everything more fish emulsion and a little all purpose fertilizer. The peppers are looking poor. Kind of yellow and stunted, but they do have new growth coming in at the crowns so I guess there's hope.

Wrong timing but I direct seeded cabbage. It will need to be tough, we're having a heat wave next week. I'm sweating already. But it was a now or never, do or die thing.
I also got kale and cucs and cosmos in. If it wasn't a "K" sound it wasn't their day. Thought I had some bush bean seed, but it wasn't in the bucket so we'll go without. My projects are all circling in a holding pattern and we have family coming to visit at the end of the month.

 

[Nyboy]

I learned if you want a teenage boy to help you, you first need to wave some cash under their nose.

 

[Beekissed]

I learned if you want a teenage boy to help you, you first need to wave some cash under their nose.

...and food...something they usually don't get. Food works.

 

[so lucky]

It is very hot here, about 94 with high humidity, so not much work happening in the garden. I did pick a zucchini, three cukes and about a pound of green beans. There's supper.
I have had to spray several times for cabbage worms and aphids, but so far the JBs are only decimating the roses.
We were gone about a week and the weather must have been fine for weeds; spent all this past week getting the majority of them cleared out of the garden again. I think the last straw I had DH get for me must have been hay--never saw so many seed pods, and now, grass. Ugh! Where are chickens when you need them? I used to run my straw through the chickens first. No seeds left when they got done with it.

 

[Nyboy]

@lucky you never got chickens again ?