Ready or not...

Here we come!

Good morning from the garden!

Today is the last day in the low 80's, starting tomorrow the heat comes back, I'll be trying my darndest to enjoy the day today and hopefully finish out the evening with a rainstorm as the warm front moves in tonight.

Cute...not cute...

Random photos from today...

Baby birds, cute!

Mama Dove's eggs...

teeny eggplant, cute...

Poor Marley, but still cute.

Old shade situation, definitely not cute.  Mama Pea, note that your pink duct tape is being used to hold the structure together after the last storm :)  Like a page torn from Southern Redneck Outdoor Living magazine.  Enlarge to get the full effect LOL.

Situation remedied this morning, a little cuter with tablecloth on well worn patio set!  I hate these gazebos but they give off so much more shade they are much more practical, and it had to be able to be quickly taken down in the high winds.  

  

Squash bug nymps, definitely not cute...

Last but not least - cute...!

Of Bugs & Blight

I think I have recovered enough that I can talk about my issues with Early Blight.  Yesterday was treatment day, I trimmed and sprayed, trimmed and sprayed, until...

there was barely anything left!

Above, the Roma tomato bed was the worst.  I pulled 2 plants from the right side completely and had to prune radically.

Below, the Red Zebra tomatoes.  I purposefully pruned these up like a tree early on, but only the one on the right had blight symptoms, and now looks pretty pathetic!  I know the plant doesn't have enough foliage to survive now, but am hoping for the fruit to ripen before I pull it completely.

The Yellow Pear tomatoes were a total loss and were pulled.  I was able to save a few ripe ones, but sadly it was toast.  

The frustrating thing is that I anticipate this stuff from the get-go, I always prune up so there is light and air circulation underneath, only water from the bottom, etc.  We did have an unusually cool, wet month of May when they were set out.  I also noted that I had the same problem only with these varieties last year, and used the same seed packs... I'll be throwing them out pronto.

Now, some good news!  My other tomatoes seem unaffected by anything other than heavy loads.

Heirloom Brandywines & Hillbillies

Hybrid Orange Wellington is a good producer in containers, these were in containers last year too, and withstood being knocked over countless times in storms.

Today, we were kicked in the gut again... Squash Vine Borers!  

Above is one of the Sugar Pie pumpkins.  I had never seen a SVB moth in real life before but when it landed I did a double take, immediately recognized it from Loch's bug briefings and started hollering at hubby to come over and help.  I happened to have a bottle of Neem Oil insecticidal soap spray in my tool caddy and nailed it repeatedly - it then basically gave me the finger and flew off.  I ran inside and looked up exactly what the eggs looked like so I could get them before they hatched and burrowed in, and ran back outside.  After briefing hubby we went to start searching all the bases of all the squash plants.  While peering in there it landed again right in front of us.  Chaos ensued, me spraying Neem at it like G.I. Jane unloading a machine gun, hubby chasing it with a fly swatter, and the dogs in the house barking trying to figure out why we seem to have had gone off the deep end.  Anyway, we didn't get it and now I'm freaked out and keep going out there to look for eggs, I'm thinking about sitting on the deck with binoculars and lying in wait!  I know it's going to be bad because it's not even a race to get the squash before the SVB damage kicks in - they haven't even bloomed yet!  I'll have to be more careful with my machine gun spray once they bloom, I surely don't want to hit any bees!

I'll finish with some good things...

It was 79ºtoday, only 42% humidity, and it just doesn't get any cooler than that around here, thank you, Mother Nature!

Got the deck cleaned up and rearranged...

and shocked my fish by cleaning the pond!

Thanks to all of you for your helpfulness on the zucchini planting, I'll be doing that tomorrow.  We are expected to remain below 82 degrees until Friday, when the heat gets kicked back up again.

Question for you...

I was forced to buy my zucchini trap-crop seedlings by the cell pack, so I have SIX seedlings.  I have never grown zucchini (yet I still get them on my counter?) but I am terrified of having too much LOL.


How many seedlings should I plant?  They will be grown on my fence.


My goal is to lure away the squash bugs from my other stuff, but if I get zucchini in the process, I don't want too much!  Yeah, I know, it's all too much...


I might add that I'm having a garden party Saturday and I know I can give away extra seedlings to good homes, they won't end up in the trash :)

If feet freak you out, don't read this post!

permadirt (definintion) dirt that a gardener believes is ground in to the point of it being useless to attempt to scrub off. as in:  "oh, my feet are clean, it's just permadirt".

Who else suffers from this?  It usually appears at the same time as tomato fingers, which is the dirt and green that is ground into the fingers from tying and pruning tomatoes.

Today I decided enough!  Instead of settling for the usual shower scrub, after the day I had I opted for a foot soak in the kid's tub and a good scrubbin'!

Finn came in and saw me perched on the edge of his tub with my feet dripping permadirt on his tub walls and said "ewwww, gross, MOM, go in your own bathroom!  But I don't have a tub in mine, and I'm too short to stick my feet in the sink and stay upright!

One scrub brush, mint soap & scrub and pumice stone later, voila!  Apparently it does come off, who knew?!

But apparently the flip flop tan is real!

That was pretty much the best part of the day.  I will say that our weather is beautiful, lower 80's and no humidity, nice breeze - that made working in the garden all day very bearable.  The work today however, was pretty traumatic.  Today was tomato blight day, and I spent the entire day trimming, spraying and disinfecting, hoping for the best.  A little too traumatic to post photos of it actually, maybe tomorrow.

"almost ooops!" - I had this combined with my other post today until I realized that the shop I urged people to visit was listed and I surely don't want anyone googling their shop and seeing my permadirt feet instead :)

More weekend stuff...

Here's some random nice things from the weekend that didn't make it into my weekend posts - 

We needed eggs so we headed out Saturday to pick some up from Gina, or "Miss Gina" as the kids call her.  They were able to collect the eggs themselves, so the kids were ecstatic!

Here's Finn reaching for the eggs...

And one of the girls saying, "oh, I don't think so"!  

They were able to collect quite a few that morning, a great experience for them.  They know the chickens our eggs come from, but have never gotten to do the best part :)

more shots of the ladies...

After that we drove out to one of the kayak launches we use near Gina's place to just have a look.

  

Then headed out to a small shop in the boonies for ice cream.  There is a little country shop that opened up that has had some trouble with vandals and someone repeatedly calling the city for groundless code inspections and they have had a hard go of it getting their little mom & pop country store off to a start.  You can read about it on the owner's blog here, but basically the most recent problem was unfounded and the city gave them the ability to be fully operational again. I might add that the local community rallying helped attract the attention of the local news station that did a nice story on them which helped I think.  I really have to wonder about people, whether they are are afraid of competition or just plain mean.  It is small stores like this that I truly enjoy going to, and code compliance is getting so out of hand that it's beyond difficult to run a business anymore.  They sell beachy antique country items, jewelry by local artists, handmade soaps as well as coffee, ice cream, and fresh farm eggs, you can even hitch up your horse to a post while you shop!  They are way out in the country, and I figure if you are out shopping in the country, that's what you would hope to find! - I guess not everyone agrees.  Anyways, we wanted to show our support by spending some of our own hard-earned cash there and showing the kids why it's important that we do so.  If you live locally, head out to Southern Fried Studio & Shop in Pungo and do the same, we need to support our local small businesses, and it's a peaceful drive out there, too - combine it with stops to the numerous roadside farm stands and berry picking fields and you have a fantastic outing!  They also have a Facebook page if you want to check it out and show your support.

One last thing, I actually did finish hubby's shirt on Friday, here it is... 

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!