What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Put up the trellis for the late planting of Fortex pole beans, and thinned them to final spacing (2 every 12"). Although there are still strings to tie, all trellis poles & frames are up. Also weeded around the peppers & pinched off any growing peppers, in preparation for covering the cages.

DW & I drove out to the rural garden, to see how it had fared through the rainfall. The good news: no flooding, and no sign of erosion. The bad news: about 1/2 of the garden was waterlogged, and too wet to walk in. A lot of previously healthy plants are wilting, including the entire row of Grandma Robert's Purple Pole beans. Whether that is due to wet soil, or herbicide overspray from the adjacent farm field, only time will tell (the farmer was spraying something the last time we were there). The weather will be 90's & dry for the weekend, hopefully most of the plants will recover as the soil dries out.

More bad news. We took the floating row cover with us, intending to cover the kabocha squash & pumpkins before insects appeared. When I walked out to inspect the plants, three SVB moths were already flying in & out along the row! Apparently the June heat caused them to hatch early. Cucumber beetles were also swarming on some of the vines, so it is already too late to cover the plants. Unless I can find a spray to kill the SVB eggs, it will be a battle to save the squash this year.

We re-weeded some rows & tied strings for some of the beans & bitter melon which were ready to climb; but DW is still struggling with her leg, and my knees were bothering me, so we quit early. Tomorrow will be hot, so we will go early & get as much done as we can; I hope to get mulch on the weeded areas before it rains again.

I hope you save the squash!

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I did some weeding around squash and cucumbers. Putting string up for beans and getting others to start up the fence. All beans look good in the east side of garden but I have a small row on the west side and not as big and healthy and I am not sure if I put manure over there, so I will put some over there tonight. I tied up tomato plants to the fence. It is going to be crazy soon. I hope to do a better job of keeping these tomatoes up off the ground. I picked some small banana peppers, DD picked kale, pie cherries, and raspberries yesterday. I ate some raspberries and have the water on them. They are not near as healthy this year and I guess did not get enough water on, but still there will be plenty. I will have to put manure in there later and get all the dead canes out and weeds. It looks like a lot of canes grew on the outside of my wire fence they usually grow up inside of, but the wasps and bees have just been all over them and the cherry bush. DS did some trimming and got stung, so I did not go back there that much this year. I am going out this evening when cooler and put more string up and tie some more tomato plants, more weeding, more everything. lol

 

[digitS']

Two and a half hours running the tiller. I'm a little more than half done but it was about 30 minutes too much work!

The neighbor has done a good job with irrigation. Absolutely astounding how much some things grew! First of all, the Siberian kale did fine and better than the Scotch. Siberia!! Well anyway ... the Portuguese kale took a beating but so did the broccoli. Those problems are from the darn flea beetles and, maybe, the high temperatures.

Some of the corn is tasseling. Looks real good and I hope I didn't damage it with the new tiller. It's a little wider than the old tiller
and I didn't allow enuf for that.

Of course the weeds didn't have any problems . Rampant!

Steve

 

[Dirtmechanic]

Tomorrow is gonna be a weeding and staking day in the garden. Just cut grass today, and ran the strimmer. Watered some potted roses.

 

[Zeedman]

DW & I started early for what was supposed to be a short day in the rural garden... but although it was hot (relatively speaking ) there was a comforting breeze for most of the day. So we stayed about 8 hours after all. DW focused on tying string on the trellises, while I did touch-up weeding & laid mulch. It was slow going, we took a lot of cool-down breaks; but trellises & mulching are about 1/3 done now.

I took along a spray bottle with my secret organic bug solution, hoping to kill a few SVB moths; but they were either no-shows, or slipped in while I wasn't looking. What I did find was about a dozen squash bugs, hiding under pumpkin leaves that were touching the ground (one of their favorite gathering places). Those were easily killed by the soap spray. It looks like a big squash bug hatch this year, I'll have to keep a watch for the adults & search for eggs, until this hatch ends. Cucumber beetles had started to swarm on the Tromboncino, so I sprayed those as well. I think the mild Winter here will result in an exceptionally buggy Summer.

Between morning services & the family gathering later for the 4th, tomorrow will be a short day. Which is probably just as well, we have been pushing ourselves pretty hard & both need a rest. We brought 2 bales of hay back from the rural garden (where it is in dry storage). That should be enough hay to finish mulching the 35' row of Fortex, and the 18' row of the mystery cowpea @Bluejay77 sent me.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

DW & I started early for what was supposed to be a short day in the rural garden... but although it was hot (relatively speaking ) there was a comforting breeze for most of the day. So we stayed about 8 hours after all. DW focused on tying string on the trellises, while I did touch-up weeding & laid mulch. It was slow going, we took a lot of cool-down breaks; but trellises & mulching are about 1/3 done now.

I took along a spray bottle with my secret organic bug solution, hoping to kill a few SVB moths; but they were either no-shows, or slipped in while I wasn't looking. What I did find was about a dozen squash bugs, hiding under pumpkin leaves that were touching the ground (one of their favorite gathering places). Those were easily killed by the soap spray. It looks like a big squash bug hatch this year, I'll have to keep a watch for the adults & search for eggs, until this hatch ends. Cucumber beetles had started to swarm on the Tromboncino, so I sprayed those as well. I think the mild Winter here will result in an exceptionally buggy Summer.

Between morning services & the family gathering later for the 4th, tomorrow will be a short day. Which is probably just as well, we have been pushing ourselves pretty hard & both need a rest. We brought 2 bales of hay back from the rural garden (where it is in dry storage). That should be enough hay to finish mulching the 35' row of Fortex, and the 18' row of the mystery cowpea @Bluejay77 sent me.

Yeah shield bugs have been needling me a little bit lately. I found some neem oil on sale so now its veggie defensive manuevers for the rest of the season.

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday i watered and weeded and buried a mole. we've been invaded by a family of moles this year so they're running all over the place under a lot of the gardens where i can't set a mole trap to capture them until i find out a place they are running regularly that goes into a garden or the grassy spaces that are left (not much). one particular path they've used a lot i've caught two moles in the same spot so i wonder if the rest of the tribe is going to run through there too or if they're on their own now. i haven't really done much reading on the family or social life of moles. i just know that when the rains weren't happening i couldn't get the trap to work because the ground was so dry the pushed up dirt would fluff around the trip pan on the trap instead of setting it off. it took me about four days to capture the first mole and that only happened after it had rained for a few days to get the ground firmed up enough.

normally when moles come along i can trap them within a day or two if i can find a regular run they're using as they must feed often (once every four hours or so).

having so many runs happening under the gravel mulch is frustrating, it's like a cat being teased by a mischievious snake that keeps moving the gravel, but can't get at it... i have to walk around and step on the older mole hills and tunnels to see what is new.

i can't imagine them finding much to eat down there under the mulch and black plastic. it's sand and not much new organic matter ever gets down there to feed a worm. i've not had moles run under there so much before. eventually they figure out that there's nothing to eat down there and they come out in a garden or the grassy spaces where i can trap them. such a mess they can make though...

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

The weeds are out of control. Not too bad in the garden, I seem to be keeping that, under control, but the edges of the garden out of control. I am getting tired too easy last week. It is pretty cool when I went out, but I think whatever caused the coughing and laryngitis has something to do with it. I will out out and do what I can in the morning before it gets too hot. I saw the first flower on a squash plant. I put some raspberries in the freezer.

 

[flowerbug]

i started screening gravel from the dirt. i thought it was only going to take me an hour or two for the first part and that didn't happen as i was out there until about 11:30, by which time i was melting in the heat and getting ready for a break so that was it for most of the day other than a quick mole inspection later and picking a few leaves of creeping charlie out of the lawn out front (in the shade!). still way too hot. we have two more days of low 90s and then 81 and then 72 in the forecast, so the rest of the week isn't so icky, we hope, rains in the forecast and would be good. i watered the other day but start backing off on watering now that the plants are bigger as i want those roots to go down in the ground and not hang out too near the surface, but i have to keep some water on the clay or it starts getting deep cracks.

 

[digitS']

The weeds are out of control. Not too bad in the garden, I seem to be keeping that, under control, but the edges of the garden

I know. But, everywhere!

Purslane. What was beginning to bloom in the paths should now be history. Fat lotta good it's gonna do for seed production. How many seeds will one missed plant make, 100? 1000? How years will the seeds be viable if they are tilled into the ground, 1 year? 2? 20?

The potatoes were hilled - what was that ... about 15 days ago - yesterday there was nice, fresh purslane 6 & 8 inches tall in the spuds? I mean, after all that loose soil was moved around the plants, there was not weed ONE to be seen!

111° ... Good attention to watering and soil moisture ... interesting how you could see how sunlight restricted weed growth but give that purslane shade and varoom ... off it went!

Steve
more sore today from 2 hours of sitting on a stool, reaching, stretching, to pull weeds than 2 hours of running the tiller.