Oh No Squash Bugs

It seems the next in the long line of garden plagues this year will be squash bugs.  This morning one of the zucchini was wilting.  It looked a little wilty yesterday and worse today.  So I took it out.  I still have several plants remaining there. 

As I was examining the other plants for problems I found this...

Actually I found about half a dozen clusters.

At first I thought it was Cucumber Beetles, but this little guy is the only one I've seen in a week.

Then ...

Squash Bug Nymphs.

Uh Oh.

I found an adult on one of my cantaloupe vines but no time for a photo op.

Those things are "Squish on Sight"

I figured I'd better put eyes on the covered cucumber plants.  They are just fine but needed a little weeding.  The Purslane was starting to come in thick.  You have to get that stuff early.

In fact, I was making a mental list of anything that is going better this year than last and I came up with Purslane.  Both of my Sweet Corn beds are completely weed free this year thanks to two or three sessions with the claw when they were just about 6 inches high.

This is my Sweet Corn bed last year (below).

At least its all one kind of weed.  That way it almost looks purposeful.

Or at least sort of tidy.

I cleaned the Strawberry bed for the second time this year.

This year we have dozens and dozens of these little Pearl Crescent butterflies.

Their host plant is Aster and we have a fair share of wild Aster.

I had a nice big, fat, green cabbage ready to harvest and I decided to try Sauerkraut.

I had seen the Ball Fermenting Lids on the 5 Acres and a Dream blog.  Useful gadgets like that really appeal to me so I put Sauerkraut on my mental To Do list for this year.

I read up on recipes and watched some instructions on YouTube.

Because I am new at this I laid out everything ahead of time along with my notes.

I used our big McCoy bowl.  This is the 12 inch but we also recently acquired a hard to find 14 inch bowl at a flea market for about half $$ what you would pay online.  These heavy old bowls are excellent for hand mixing (we use them for mixing sausage) because they stay put and don't walk around on the counter.  This was also perfect for massaging the salt into the cabbage.

I sliced the cabbage by hand instead of using a mandolin because I've determined I am not safe to use one.... I didn't want any undesirable pieces (of me) in my kraut.   I slice lettuce and cabbage frequently so I'm pretty good at it.   I've been obsessively tucking the edges down into the brine but perfection seems impossible.  I'm going to leave these alone for a few hours and then reassess to see if I need to add a smidge of water.