For today, I feel a little better about the garden situation.
Yesterday, I dropped off the tiller tire to be fixed, and picked it up this morning. They put a tube inside the tire, so maybe it won't go flat so much anymore. The Husband put it back on the tiller this evening after supper, and I took a spin down one row and up another. It worked just fine.
The farm supply store is right next to the tire repair store, and before I picked up the tire, I went in the farm supply store and bought POISON. Yes, poison. Hated to do it, but experience has taught me that I simply cannot grow vegetables without fungicide and insecticide unless I want to sit in the garden 24/7 with a bucket of soapy water. I do try to find the least viscious products out there, things that don't linger for weeks. In addition to the garden poison, I bought ant poison. After 35 years of living in this house, we suddenly have an ant problem. Big old black things that seem to have a sweet tooth. I don't mind poisoning their asses.
At the farm store, I also bought myself a bodacious sprayer. Blue metal thing, with a beefy hose and a metal sprayer attachment. No more of the cheap plastic stuff. I'm tired of non-working equipment!
While The Husband put the tire on the tiller, I sprayed the tomatoes - just dosed up that new sprayer with a combination of fungicide and insecticide and went after the tomatoes. The garden plot harbors every kind of blight known to man, and keeping it at bay is a constant battle. And, of course, we have squash bugs and tomato worms, and last year we saw Japanese beetles for the first time. We put cages around the tomato plants tonight, and removed any leaves that were touching the ground, then I gave them a good soaking with the sprayer. The fungicide directions said to re-spray every two weeks. Remind me if I forget. ;)
Overall, the garden is looking pretty good. The peas still need to be re-planted. Hopefully, I can do that tomorrow. Cucumbers and squash are looking good. The okra is still kind of puny, but I thinned it and have faith that it'll beef up once the weather warms up. I need more tomato plants - only planted 12, and something broke one. I'd like to have enough tomatoes to can, and 11 plants probably won't make enough. But there's not much room left in the garden. I may have to get inventive and plant tomatoes in the skips in the bean rows.
As I sit here on the back porch writing this (9 p.m.), I hear a critter lumbering around outside the porch. It's probably that nasty, scruffy raccoon that fought the cat for its food, the one that knows no fear. Or it could be the mama coon we saw last weekend, coming down a tree with two babies waddling behind her.
Let me get the flashlight and the bb gun.
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