I'm not giving up...

Just giving in a little...

Not only do I have squash bugs, but I have Early Blight on my Amish Paste tomatoes.

I did it.  I bought sprays.

I'm not happy about it, but it figures that when I decide to make the big pressure canner purchase to better preserve all my expected harvest, this happens.  Well, this year I'm not having any of this cr@p, this is WAR!

I hustled the kids this morning to get to the nursery early and get my war waging supplies, but alas it was already too hot to treat the blight situation by the time we got back home at 9:30.  I did brave the heat to go out and at least try and trim the squash bug egg situation and rid the squash bed of the garlic that was nearing harvest time to make treating easier.

Behind the sprays and the cute kid above are some "hedging my bed" (get it? LOL) plants.  I went ahead and purchased a hybrid grape tomato and hybrid big tomatoes resistant to blight.  I had to do it, I'm afraid of no tomatoes!  I also have read repeatedly that squash bugs favor zucchini over all other squashes, so I bought some.  Can you believe I don't ever plant zucchini?  LOL and it still shows up on my counter somehow.  What I thought was funny was that I couldn't just buy one, noooooo, it had to be a cell 3-pak.  Upon arriving home I noticed there were two plants in each cell, equaling SIX zucchini seedlings.  This is like the nursery/greenhouse planter's sick joke.  I admit I'd do it too if I was a commercial planter, heehee!  Anyway, I'm planning on these becoming the trap crop so ideally I can throw napalm at them and not my heirloom veggies!

Here's Loch reading out of his bug book while I harvest garlic.  I still can't get this kid to handpick the bugs for me and throw into the soapy bucket, but he's good at pointing them out to me LOL.

Finding beauty in the war zone... "peek a boo Pansy!"

Finn is turning into my cameraman, now I actually have another photo with me in it!

By noon it was too hot to be outside any more so I retreated inside to hang the garlic and make bread for the kids' lunches this week, can you believe they are still in school here?  Craziness, I say, or as Ribbit would say - it's un-American!  Indeed.

My favorite harvest to look at, the garlic is now curing!

Saved the worst for last...

the Amish Paste bed... now has Early Blight.

I wanted to treat tonight with the organic fungicide I bought, but "they" are calling for thunderstorms, so I'll get at it first thing in the a.m.

Below is the Brandywine bed, looking good (knocking on a lot of wood these days).  After last year and the bacterial wilt on the tomatoes I separated the tomatoes into 2 different areas, although this one is the most congested.  I'm thinking I might treat preventatively anyway, I sure don't want anything to happen to these.

Speaking of thunderstorms, this is what is moving in as I just went to go look out the window...

It looked like this the other night too, but we got zip.  

 I'm exhausted. Even though I didn't really spend more than 90 minutes outside today, the heat did me in.  

 Next up, one of these!  Blackberry Lemonade made with last years frozen blackberry juice with a splash of big girl vodka mixed in!  Only a splash though, since I really want to finish a book tonight!

Just as I was getting ready to hit "publish" I noticed it's pouring outside, yay!

Saturday. (creative title, eh?)

The birthday party Loch went to last night went well, even though it finally did rain!  We dropped him off and came back a couple of hours later to pick him up and they were all playing outside after the rain and covered in mosquito bites, but they didn't seem to notice.

Finn was a bit upset that Loch was at a party, so I took him out for frozen yogurt.  I was amazed at this kid, there was a wall of dispensers filled with candy toppings and what did he choose?  Plain vanilla yogurt with strawberries, blackberries & granola!  I, too prefer the simple stuff for ice cream, but for a 6 year old to choose it was interesting.  It wasn't even the kind of fruit packed in syrup, it was the plain stuff!  

After that he was really nice to endure a short trip to JoAnn's for buttons and then to the bookstore to use my 40% off coupon for a nice canning book.  I already have the standard Ball Book (short version) and "Preserving Summer's Bounty" and they have been pretty helpful covering all the basics, but I wanted a really comprehensive one if I'm going to have the ability to can meat as well as the standard garden produce.  I did get side tracked by the ones with all the pretty photos, but found them lacking in lots of library type information as I figured and ended up with this one which is put out by the Rodale people which is a very trustworthy source of info for the gardening/preservation folk out there.

Speaking of the garden, this is today's harvest.  Once again had to take yellow pears off a dying plant, they are slowly turning and I'm hoping to get some before it's toast.  This is the remnants of a bolting lettuce, just took the good parts and had to compost it.  Rare around here to see lettuce & tomato in the same photo.

Not enough for a big salad, but enough to make tacos for dinner - nobody complains on taco night around here :)

All I did today in the garden was harvest and walk around after dinner, it was just too hot.  The mosquitoes are now out in full force.  Was greeted by this lovely find:

As Finn says "baby pickles are growing"!

The Brandywines are the only variety out there showing no signs of stress, disease, insects or other general mayhem.  They are getting quite large.

Turn the corner to check on the squash bed and get smacked in the face with...

#$&%!

My squash hasn't even bloomed yet and they are already here.  Found a few that were just hatching too, we smashed what we could.  Lots are turning metallic already, indicating they are very close to hatching.  I hope they hold out until morning when I can wage war in a proper fashion.

 Leaving on a happy note... look who's back!

Watermelons and Waging War

I couldn't stand it any longer, I went out and took it! It's a bouncing 12.5 lb Baby Bush Watermelon! So here's the funny thing: as I was poking at the vines, the little one fell off. Had a brown tendril like it's supposed to and fell off the vine. The BIG one is the first melon that developed and still had no brown tendrils and was still firmly attached, I had to cut it off. What gives? I cut the small one open and it appears to be ripe, although it doesn't have much in it since it's so small! We'll cut the larger open tomorrow and I will report back on the taste.

Finn begged me to make pickles, so I had just enough for 2 jars of refrigerator dills. He was pretty upset when I told him it would be about a week before they would taste "pickly", so I offered him a slice of fresh cucumber but he wouldn't try it.

It's warm today, about 93º (notice how that's not "hot" anymore LOL?), so I spent most of the day reorganizing the canning closet and taking stock of what I need. I definitely need to replace my old canning rack before a disaster happens! Also got my seedling trays and seed starting mix out, seeds should be here Friday.

bad dog

On a down note, Sprocket the Outback Jack killed one of the juvenile doves a few minutes ago. Mama Dove is pacing with her wings out on the deck railing and just breaking my heart. I will never get used to the Jack Russell in her, give me Border Collie neuroticism any day over this. To her credit, Marley was barking and trying to alert me to the chaos in the yard but I ignored her. At least Sprocket didn't tear it up, she carried it up to me completely intact, damn dog. She's still my lovebug, but I am again reminded of the nature of dogs!

In a few minutes I am headed out to wage war against Squash Bugs and Leaf Footed Bugs who are drilling holes in my tomatoes, someone's going to get hurt, and it won't be me.... I have scissors & soap and Neem if necessary. I plan to cut them in half, they're easy to get when they are mating and being all gross and squash-buggly - what a way to go, huh?

Then I plan to be civilized and enjoy a glass of wine and knit, maybe read a book... us gardeners are a deranged bunch, aren't we?

daily dose of gross

Squash Bugs...want to know more? Click here!