Pestilence and the Barrier Method

Let me preface this post by saying...  I Hate Sewing.

It takes a lot to get me to sew these days.  I can't seem to get along with a sewing machine...

I never took Home Economics in high school.  Instead I took Physics and Trigonometry and other brainiac classes.  Obviously, looking back, I should have taken something more useful such as Home Ec, possibly photography and definitely a shop class or two.  And I struggled through Physics and Trig, but not nearly as much as I struggled with cutting a square piece of nearly invisible, stretchy, green tulle fabric.  I mean how is that supposed to happen?  Maybe we should have covered it in Physics.

I've done my fair share of sewing.  I grew up thinking that was natural.  My grandmother was a wonderful seamstress, and so is my mother. They sewed their own clothes.  They even sewed my riding habits which, for those who don't know, are the equivalent of a tuxedo with satin collars and ribbons up the outside seams.  Obviously they were well schooled.

Mom taught me how to thread the machine and load the bobbin and sew a straight line.  I haven't advanced much past that.  One evening my sister came home to find me elbow deep in a pair of removable upholstery covers with tasseled edges for some large floor pillows.  "I hate you.  You know how to do everything." she griped.  I replied, "No, all I know is how to thread the needle and the bobbin. The rest I'm just making up as I go."   "Okay", she countered, "I hate that you believe you can make it up as you go along and it works."

Fine.  Guilty as charged.   The floor pillows came out incredibly well.  You see, I have very particular tastes.  I get an idea, and if I can't find it already made, I set about to make it myself.  I've sewn countless window treatments on this premise, including some rather difficult roll shades with scalloped edges which garnered compliments from a friend with her own decorating business.  I've found that when approaching a sewing project, the best start is to find some very forgiving fabric to work with.  If it is striped or plaid, then I'm all set because I just follow the lines.  I was not prepared to work with green tulle netting.  But these are desperate times.  You see...  we have a plague.  The plague is flea beetles and last year they decimated my eggplants.


I've dealt with flea beetles in some numbers from the very beginning.  Below you can see some minor damage on the upper leaves of this Rosa Bianca eggplant which is a beautiful variety with jewel like, deep rose fruit.  The damage just looks like little pin pricks with the sun shining through.  It doesn't bother the plant much.  The brown shingles in the background tell me it's from 2008 or earlier so that is at least 5 years of successful flea beetle breeding operations.

Below is a specimen of a Galine eggplant from last year's garden.  How far we've come!  The poor thing!  I don't really remember getting a single eggplant last year, but photographic evidence proves that I got at least one before I pulled the miserable things out and humanely destroyed them.

It begins innocently enough, with a few beetles that look and behave exactly as their name suggests.  You could easily mistake them for fleas.  Diaotomaceous earth discourages them.  Spray drives them off for five minutes or so, but the constant assault of chemicals (even innocent ones like soap) and leaf choking powder does more harm to the plant than the beetles do.  Maybe.

The beetles also enjoy radishes and potatoes.  They LOVE Mustard Greens.  Organic gardeners suggest planting some as a "catch crop" where the flea beetles will happily munch away and perhaps, if you planted an acre or so of Mustard Greens, they may ignore a few eggplants nearby.

2012 potatoes with flea beetle damage

My garden is a haven where I hope to enjoy lush green, thriving plants.  I do not enjoy looking at plants which resemble Lorraine Swiss Cheese.  This just smacks of gardening failure and a black thumb.

I love to grow eggplants.  They come in a veritable rainbow of sizes, colors and shapes and, to me, are as interesting as any rose bush or geranium .  Prosperosa (above) and Round Mauve (below) are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

They even come in different shapes from round to long and narrow.  The long and early Japanese variety Ichiban prospered in my 2010 garden with lush foliage ribbed by deep purple veins. Not a single flea beetle in sight.  Exquisite. 

My personal favorite is White Lightening which is a bit smaller than the traditional American Black Beauty with a creamy white skin, smooth texture and a very mild tasting flesh.  Just look at that huge velvety leaf! Soft as a Basset Hound's ear.  See, I get a bit nutty about eggplants.  They are second only to tomatoes in my garden.  So, I take all this munching and destruction pretty personal.

This spring, in late April, on one of first really warm spring date, the flea beetles hatched.  And it was a bumper crop.  Alarming!  I first noticed them sunning themselves on the ties that edge the beds.  Thousands of them.  Literally.  Thousands.  It looked like someone had spilled a pepper shaker down each tie. I went around and sprayed with some organic bug spray.  This didn't seem to worry them.  Next, I mixed up a super strong mixture of Clorox and water and made the rounds again.  Still, no visible effect.  A day or two later, as I was weeding the beds, I waved my hand over the soil and felt them jumping, by the millions, in a cloud against my hand,  Ooooo this is not good.  Visions of devoured eggplants flashed in front of my eyes.  So, the plan is:  Lock them out.  Cover Everything.

Since eggplants are self pollinators, and do not require bees to spread pollen from flower to flower, it is a viable alternative to bag them.  Some people use floating row covers.  I don't have rows of eggplants, and I wasn't too keen on the idea of billowy white bags over each plant like runaway pillow cases. When saving seeds for tomatoes and other self pollinators, I have used small, white, tulle drawstring bags which craft stores sell for putting in wedding favors.  I decided to make giant versions of these.  But how would I get the fruit out?  Or hand pollinate them if need be?  I couldn't be ripping the bag off each time and then stuffing the plant back in.  The simple answer was to install a zipper down one side.  Now I realize, these bags do not hermetically seal the plants. Some beetles will still get in.  After several days I have found a couple of beetles on the leaves which I have squished.  But, when you know for a fact you have a gozillion beetles jumping about, one per plant per day is a ratio I am comfortable dealing with.

And sew I set out to make the invisible, green, tulle eggplant condoms with side zippers.  They turned out pretty well.  I pinned Velcro cord organizers to each corner to suspend them from the plant supports, and used pretty green satin ribbon as the drawstring, which probably won't be pretty and satiny or even green for long.  The green tulle is sheer enough to allow air and sunlight in and allow visual inspection for other pest infestations.  And speaking of other pest infestations, the barrier theory is adaptable to other pests as well.  Take for instance slugs and cut worms in your cucurbits.

Two years ago, my cucumber transplants began to mysteriously damp off.  Or at least that was what I thought was happening.  The conditions didn't make that seem possible.  After several days of this, as I crawled along on my hands and knees peering under plants, I noticed baby slugs, so tiny that you could line two of them up end to end on a grain of rice, were gnawing away at the stems.  Some of them survived as the stems scarred over.  Applying Diatomaceous Earth at the base, and setting out trays of beer kept them under control.

Last year I had my first real trouble with squash vine borers.  They chewed the heck out of this zuchini plant.  Now, zuchini are tough.  You can cut the invader out, cover the damage with soil and water well for a few days and the plant will probably survive.  In fact, this one carried on with no intervention at all for many weeks.  But again, I don't want to look at gnawed on plants anymore than I want to replace them.  So, preventative measures were in order.  We saved toilet paper rolls all winter.

Planting your cucurbits in toilet paper rolls will ward off slugs, cut worms, and squash vine borers because the little buggers crawl along the soil looking for an unattended stem to eat.  If all they find is a cardboard wall, they will move on.  Hopefully.  Plants this size are easy to thread through the tube.  If the tube comes unglued with water damage, or the leaves are too big, just cut down the side and place two over lapping tubes around the stem.  And why, as my husband asked, use cardboard rolls which are sure to fall apart and not some sort of plastic collar?  #1.  They are organic and can be thrown in the compost #2.  They are FREE (more or less) and #3.  There is a guaranteed constant supply of them.

Another barrier is used stockings.  This has the advantage of being long enough to protect a length of stem which may be lying along the ground.  Here I have my zuchinni dressed with a toilet paper roll and a knee high stocking just waiting to be pulled up the stem.  Again, FREE (more or less), a guaranteed constant supply, and they expand to fit.  What more could you want?

This is one of those pauses in gardening.  The seeds are sewn.  The plants are transplanted.  The peas, the flowers, the potatoes and the carefully coddled tomatoes. Everything is trimmed, weeded, edged, mulched, protected, mowed, hoed and hilled .  Plans have been laid.  Hopes are high.  And now.... we wait.

Pests, Problems and Preventative Measures

The end of June, every year, we are invaded.  It's Japanese Beetle time!  They showed up right on schedule last Wednesday.  I found two on the pea plants, and I knocked them down and squished them.  Really, they don't do a whole lot of damage in the garden.  They munch on the bean leaves a little, but they really wreak havoc on Tim's Linden trees, and anything that threatens Tim's trees is considered an arch enemy.  Which means its really not wise for me to ignore them in the garden.

They also munch on the blackberries, raspberries and wild grape vines.  I have a porcelain vine in the front landscaping, concealing the A/C unit, and they find that particularly delectible.  So these are good places to catch them.  We use a variety of methods to control them.  Each fall we treat a portion of our lawn with Milky Spore.  What this is is a powder containing bacteria which infects the grubs and kills them before they can hatch.  This is a long term program, but its easy and effective.  You can purchase it at most lawn and garden stores.

Secondly, there are beetle traps. A smelly lure (smells sort of like black licorice) is placed above the bag.  The stupid little buggers are lured onto the plastic card by the hundreds and slide down into the hour glass shaped bag where they are unable to escape.  You hang this in a tree up wind from your garden so they follow the smell away to their deaths.  Beetle traps are great if you want to see a volume of the pests dead in one spot.  They have two drawbacks.  #1:You will draw beetles in from all over your neighborhood, and they will stop for lunch along the way (in your beans).  #2:  Racoons find the bags full of bugs to be an irresistable snack.  But, in really bad years, I will hang three or four traps just to put a dent in the population.  Well, three drawbacks.  Every few days you have to empty a bag of smelly dead bugs and put a fresh one up.  And if you are particularly unlucky, it will also be full of rain water and will likely pour down the front of you, or at least fill your shoe.  But, I've found the most fun and satisfying way to wage war on beetles.  Soapy Water.

Japanese Beetles are slow and clingy. They have two thoughts on their little bug brains. Food. And Sex. Which means they are really easy to sneak up on. All you have to do is walk around with a cup full of water and knock them off the leaves into it. Actually, the prescribed plan is "soapy" water. But yesterday, when I noticed there were enough beetles around to warrant catching, I didn't have any soap handy. So I just grabbed a cup of water and knocked them in there. I figured the soapy part was to slow down their escape with a layer of suds. Nope, they aren't getting out of that. They just swim around in there, poop, and pause for a little pool sex.

As I was wandering around with this cup of swimming, pooping, fornicating bugs, I began to wonder what I was going to do to kill them.  Obviously it was taking them awhile to drown.  I could either leave the cup of water out in the sun and boil them (seemed a little cruel even for bugs) or pour them out on the pavers and try to stomp them all before they regained their senses.  In my travels, I happened by the house.  So I went in and got my old fashioned organic Castile soap which I use for the occasional organic bug spray and I squirted some into my cup o'bugs.  Well by Golly!  That's what the soap is for!  In under 20 seconds every last beetle was doing the deadman's float.   So that's how you deal with Japanese Beetles.

Next on the list of July Pests and Problems is Powdery Mildew.  What starts out as little white specs on your concurbits...

Soon turns to a rash of spots.  Then the leaves begin to yellow and die.

Besides being ugly and reducing your lush, dark green summer squash plants to shriveled, yellow vines, it stops the plant from flowering and producing, spreads into your cuccumbers, and will eventually kill every vine.  And we don't want that.

In the past I have messed around with copper spray (Organic copper spray of course), and pruned off the infected leaves, but really, you need to attack this problem before it gets started.

#1.  NEVER water at night, and always avoid dampening the leaves.  No sense inviting trouble by giving mildew exactly what it is looking for... cool, damp leaves.

#2. Stay on top of the first signs of it and immediately remove and destroy the infected leaves.

#3.  (This should actually be #1) Prevent it in the first place.

Back in 1999 a study was conducted in Brazil which showed that simply spraying your plants with watered down milk was extremely effective in preventing powdery mildew.  This article explains it briefly better than I can.   How to Spray Milk to Prevent Powdery Mildew Disease .  If you google "pwdery mildew milk spray" you will get a lot of information.   What the milk spray does is change the PH on the leaves and introduce microbes which inhibit the growth of the mildew.  In addition, it appears to boost the plants overall immune system.  But you have to start before the infection sets in.  About 4 weeks before.  And you have to spray at least once a week.

So, since the day I planted them, I have been spraying all my squash and cuccumber plants with a 30% milk solution in the morning unless is is going to be cool or rainy.   They have now been sprayed regularly for 3 weeks, and I will continue to spray at least once a week and watch closely for signs of mildew.  So far so good.  The mildew is setting in on all the usual places, but thus far my plants are clear.

Now, on to the bacterial spec and early blight....

Mid-June Garden Tour

Here is a brief tour of this week's gardening highlights.

I came home today to find that Tim had added another garden tool to the Poop Deck Arsenal.  Pretty clever fabricating!

My ornamental plantings are really taking off.  We have two of these vintage galvanised wash tubs.  I had stopped setting them out, firstly because I didn't really have a suitable liner to plant in without ruining the tubs, and secondly because I was afraid of ruining their feet by setting them in the damp mulch.  The brick patio is a perfect location for this charming antique.  This Spring I found some oblong plastic Trugs at WalMart that fill each basin almost perfectly and are just the right height.  They even have handles making them easy to remove and tote around.  Tim drilled drainage holes in them for me.  They are planted with Tunbergia (Black Eyed Susan Vine) and trailing Nasturtium.  In another week or so you won't even be able to see the tops of the trug liners peeking out the top.

My other WalMart find was a brilliant idea.  I am using quite a bit of diatomaceous earth to ward off the slugs (which ate almost all of my cuke transplants last year) but all the containers it comes in are less than convenient dispensers.  You end up wasting a lot of it blopping it about.

When I was shopping for Copper Powder, at the nursery recently, I noticed they had a special powder puffer available for $6 and change.  A quick stop at WalMart scored Ketchup and Mustard squeeze bottles for $1.97.  I put the Copper in the Ketchup bottle.  If I had been patinet enough, I could have recycled some actual Ketchup and Mustard bottles.  Never forget to label your garden products when you remove them from their original containers.

I can now apply an accurate line around each of my squash and cucumber plants to defend against trespassers.

And puff some on the flea beetles to keep them from turning my eggplants into Swiss cheese.

  Diatomaceous earth is simply crumbled sedimentary rock.  If you magnify it, you would find it has a lot of very sharp edges.  It is extremely fine, and gets into all the cracks and crevices and soft spots of slugs and other insects and does gross bodily harm.  Be careful not to inhale it though, or it will do the same to your lungs.  But still, it is a brilliant, non-chemical, organic pest solution.

My lettuce is still in the thinning stage.  We have more lettuce than we know what to do with.  The individual plants I am leaving behind are growing large and robust.  Depending on the weather, there is still another month or before the lettuce begins to bolt.  I have a second crop started which ought to fill in at just the right time.  It's amazing how much lettuce you can raise with a couple of dollars worth of seed instead of wasting the same amount on one bag of salad.

The first planting of peas are bearing a heavy crop and the pods are just beginning to plump up.  We should be eating peas in another week.  We can also begin thinning the garlic soon and using herbs and onions sparingly.

I even have tiny tomatoes.

Despite having a pile of compost and manure in it, the Poop Deck remains the coolest, shadiest spot from which to observe the garden.

The Garden of Good and Evil

"The half-hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half-hour after midnight is for doin' evil. . . . Seems like we need a little of both tonight."

~ Minerva

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

I believe I may be giving the impression that gardening is just a walk in the park for me. It's time to fess up a little. Why tonight? Because tonight I realised that I went and missed the ripening of the first slicing tomato. Ummmmm ...Duh?

Well heck, it's at least three weeks early! Thanks to the super growing powers of my raised bed, paved, hotter than normal, growing Utopia.

Towards the end of our wine drinking/gardening hour, I happened to notice from another angle, that the Black Krim had a ripe tomato. Actually an over ripe rotten tomato. To be fair, it was jammed in the ladder and covered up with heavy foliage. But still... I knew it was there. I just wasn't paying attention. In my defense, I think this one was not just ripe to the point of rotting, but was affected by Blossom End Rot like about 15% of the fruit on this plant have been. I saw that it had a dark spot last weekend, but I gave it a chance of survival. It failed. I pried it out unceremoniously with scissors, and gave it a proper burial.

The trick to having a "green thumb" is not merely possessing some majikal power afforded by knowing the secrets of what to plant and when and where and next to what. The other half is being aware of what can go wrong, spotting it before it gets out of hand, and not only knowing what the solution is, but having the supplies on hand to address the situation immediately. This is my seventh year of gardening. I am finally progressing past the point of Dumb Luck, and am slowly making headway into the territory of Experience.

My Grandmother once was examining an oil painting. She said "It looks almost perfect until you get your nose right in it." My Uncle quipped from the background "Most paintings do look better before you put your nose in them." And so do most gardens.  They may look great from a distance... if you squint... but get your nose right in there and count the weeds and it's a different story.  So, here, in no particular order, is an up close and unflattering glimpse of the garden problems I'm facing this year, and what I am doing to solve them.

Blossom End Rot: Affecting mostly the Black Krim (I've already tossed half a dozen) and now this one on the Amish Paste.

Solution: Calcium. I've worked a small amount of Bone Meal into the soil around each plant, and until I discovered that the ripe one had lost the battle, I hadn't seen an new occurrence in over a week.

Magnesium Deficiency: Indicated by loss of color in the leaves. At first only two plants side by side were affected, but I've noticed some minor loss of color in the second bed as well.

Solution: Epsom Salts (Magnesium Sulfate) One tablespoon per gallon of water. Magnesium and Calcium actually work in conjunction with one another (sort of like Vitamin D being necessary for the absorption of Calcium) , so what I did was sprinkle a bit of bone meal beside the plants, and water it in with the Epsom Salt solution.

Powdery Mildew: YUCK! The bane of cucurbit aficionados everywhere. I've lost entire crops to this crap, and while my cucumbers have always survived, some years they look like heck before they're done.

Solution: Dilution of Baking Soda or Hydrogen Peroxide or Milk sprayed on the leaves. I actually bought Serenade spray which has been working well. It stinks. But it works. The trick is to spray weekly BEFORE you see signs of mildew. Here you can see a small round spot on the left, and then a larger area of mildew on the right. Remove the worst affect leaves and dispose of them.

This has been a big problem for us in the past. It get's on the Lilac and the Irises and completely killed the squash and pumpkins in 2008. The past week and a half it has been very humid. It started on the neighbor's crookneck squash, and although I sprayed the heck out of everything when I found it Sunday morning, and had already been spraying mine as a preventative measure, it is slowly spreading.

Sunburn: This is on the Incredible Edible Undead Tomato. It has several fruit on the top of the plant which are sunburning because it is out in the open, on it's own, in a pot. The fruit on it's lower branches are shaded by leaves and doing fine.

Solution: I could construct some sort of shelter with shade cloth to filter out some of the sun, but I have plenty of tomatoes in the regular rows, and with their massive foliage, they aren't having any trouble, so I'm letting these unfortunate individuals go.

Poor Germination: The third planting of bush beans did not germinate well, and those which did germinate damped off. In this row, only two survived, and I had to plant in between with another variety. The two large plants are Blue Lake, the smaller fill ins are Isar filet beans planted two weeks later. And then three weeks later to fill in the Isar which didn't germinate on the fill in planting.

Solution: Besides the re-planting... better luck next time. I had some trouble with this same packet of Blue Lake seeds in 2008 and these are leftovers, so I certainly can't complain.

General Dishevelment: This is the summer squash and Borage bed.

Solution: Hey, it's late in July. Some stuff is starting to look a little old and worn out. The zuchini plant is growing to the left, and the Borage, which needs a lot of support, is breaking and leaning right and just wearing out. The Borage is so top heavy with flowers, even though I carefully placed stem supports each time I knew it was going to rain, they still broke down. Next year they will be in grow through grids. This bed is about done. The one zuchini is producing very well (and may be spared), but the other two squash plants aren't setting any records so I will be pulling them out and planting peas and carrots for fall. I have enough squash (ok, TOO much) with the plants in the second bed anyway.

Japanese Beetles: This year they are a minor problem. We have about 2% of the number we did last year. Last year they all but destroyed the five Linden trees we planted, along with the Porcelain Vine and half of the Black Berries.

Solution: We put down Milky Spore last fall and again this spring so about 80% of our yard has been treated. I also have a Bag-A Bug trap up, I am seeing NOWHERE near the numbers we had in the past when I would have 3 or 4 traps up, and have to empty them every few days. These three met their end with the Drop and Stomp method. I mean they were on the Borage. The Holy Grail of Companion Planting. The stuff that is supposed to cure all pest problems. The nerve.

But all's well as ends well. I went in to finish dinner, but as I was boiling water for beans, I came down with a sinking feeling that in my angst over the lost Krim, I had neglected to check the Jap I knew was about ready. I ran back out and sure enough, it was ripe and ready...

MMMMMmmmmmmm...................

Mulching

I don’t know about other gardeners, but I have dreamt of having a garden that was so manageable in size and construction that I could experiment with the finer points of gardening rather than battling the elements. Which is to say, I’ve always thought how nice it would be to putter around with compost and pruning rather than spending my time and energies on tilling the walks, raking the rocks, pulling weeds by the bucket load, and surrendering to insects and blights. Well, thanks to the convenience of my new raised beds I have advanced to mulching!

When we put in the beds, we put a thick layer of composted horse manure on top of the soil. Through transplanting and such, some of the beds ended up with most of the compost mixed in, and the soil on top. Those areas have been producing many more weeds than the areas which still have a thick layer of compost. So I have been mulching them. And it’s FUN! And it makes everything look like it has been freshly re-carpeted.

The benefits of mulching are to keep the weeds down, moderate soil temperature, and keeping the soil from drying out. Also, it prevents diseases that can be transferred from the soil when it splashes up onto the plants. Some of the benefits of compost are that it provides microbiotic nutrients often missing in synthetic fertilizers, and improves the soil structure. So, mulching with compost is the best of both worlds.

This is my routine. I head out to the compost pile with a wheelbarrow, a potato fork, and my handy dandy grain sifter. I put two scoops of compost into the sifter, and sift away, throwing whatever is left into a hole in the top of the pile to be composted further. This leaves me with lovely smooth compost to mulch with. This manure has been turned weekly for two months and has stopped working and is now cool and will not burn the plant stems.

The freshly weeded bed prior to mulching, with the bare soil exposed.

And the same spot 5 minutes later with a layer of compost freshly applied. Doesn't it look nice?

In the squash bed I also made use of some old hay. This hay has served many purposes. It was a late cutting taken off the fields to provide bales for the public to sit on during our local Apple Festival. My uncle said if we needed some mulch hay to have handy, would we be so kind as to swing by after the festival and pick this up. This batch was first used in the lawn to mulch grass seed where we dug up to put in the drain lines to the water tank. After being dried in the sun, and raked a few times, it has broken down into short pieces which were perfect for mulching around the summer squash.

I love this grain sifter. I could have built the same thing with some scrap lumber and a piece of hardware cloth. But, I remember there being a sifter just like this in the dirt room of the greenhouse that I grew up in. We were unable to find the sifter before the greenhouse was torn down, so I kept an eye out on Ebay and found this one which was picked out of a barn in the Pittsburgh, PA area. Whenever possible, I prefer to find useful gardening collectibles. It feels better.

Speaking of gardening collectibles, and the Greenhouse.... this little dibber board was one of my favorite items. As mentioned before, the greenhouse was torn down some 8 years ago. My husband and I had already picked through the vast mountains of Junque which the last owner had accumulated but I couldn't find the dibber. I looked, Tim looked, the owner looked. Even my mother went on several salvage missions and she couldn't find it either. Finally, on her last trip, the week the houses were to be demolished, she and the owner were making one last tour, and there sat the dibber on top of a pile, under a bench in the sales room. This dibber was from the days prior to individual cell packs, when the packs of annuals were planted in packs of 6, 9 or even 12 and had to be cut apart with a knife. This would be pressed into each pack providing holes to transplant the seedlings into. Although it was always hanging about on the front lines, everybody usually just poked holes with their fingers anyway. Still it was one of my favorite objects and it holds a special place in my garden collection.

My mother also has a large flat sized dibber board which is missing a lot of it's pegs. It must be a trendy sort of little item though, because Martha Stewart has one....

Lesbian Squash and Other Gardening Issues

I knew that title would get your attention. The neighbors' squash plants have a proliferation of blooms. But, we turned over all the leaves to examine them, and all the blossoms are female. Not a male among them. And this does not bode well for squash production, because you need at least one male flower in there to pollinate the female flowers. Without that all important male flower, you can't even practice forced flower sex with a Q-tip or paint brush. My husband, a gardening rookie was shocked to find that this was a concern. Ahhhh, the complicated and stressful life of a gardener. My squash plants are not to the point of flowering yet, so that is one worry I can put off.

But production has started. I have a half grown Ichiban eggplant.

A quarter sized Barlow Jap tomato.



Quite a few Sweet Pickle peppers.



And a bell pepper the size of a marble.

The Undead Tomato has been transplanted to a BIG pot, and has taken up residence in the garden. It's mate (which I snapped off during transplanting) is doing just as well and has set a teeny tiny tomato.

Of course there's lots more stuff growing in the garden. I just got my bean poles sanded and painted (thanks Honey, I would have gotten to it) and back up. These will support the Painted Lady pole beans from beans I saved for two years. I have red clover planted in the bed, and an artichoke in the center.




My own squash beds are doing fine, and the Borage I planted between them is just about ready to bloom and draw all sorts of beneficial pollinators to my wide expanse of gravel.

The cucumber and bush bean bed is lush and thriving.

And construction has progressed with the completion of the pergolas over the gates.

We even have benches to sit on which is really a necessity since we all end up congregating in the garden on evenings and weekends. We've looked at a lot of benches over the past two weeks, and settled on these for three reasons. They were very inexpensive, can be painted if they need a freshening up, and fold completely flat for winter storage. I plan to either get or make cushions for them, but right now, they are nice for setting down a wine glass.

Tim is working on attaching tight woven rabbit proof fence along the bottom 2 feet of the perimeter, and I have taken to worrying about early blight and bacterial speck. No sign of them yet, nor is there any powdery mildew. I've been pruning the tomato plants religiously, and got up early this morning to spray everything with a dilution of baking soda, oil, and castile soap.

I'm going completely organic this year. I've used some bone meal around the maters to ward off blossom end rot, and I've fertilized once with a fish and sea weed fertilizer. My next project it to run some compost through the sifter and dress the beds where digging has brought the bare soil to the top allowing weeds to grow. All in all, the weeds are still in check.