Well, the vegetable garden is a mess.
Because of all the rain, it's been close to a week since I set foot in it. It's been so wet for so long that the ground has a sour smell. The paths that I've beaten down going in and out of the garden were hard enough that I didn't sink in the mud, but I didn't dare to step off the paths.
There were 4 squash just the right size for eating, twice that many that were rotting on the vines, and about a dozen more as big as watermelons and as yellow as school buses. The squash vines will have to go, pretty soon. (I've been saying that for weeks, haven't I?) All of the tomato cages had fallen over, vines and all. Most of the okra was as big as daggers.
The purple hull peas are ripening.
Two cabbages have drowned. I couldn't even walk in the end of the garden where the broccoli, brussels sprouts and carrots are planted, so I don't know how they're doing. They're all about half covered up with grass.
Bugs. All kinds of bugs. Ants. Squash bugs. And some other bugs on the squash I didn't recognize that resembled this critter:
The article that goes with the picture says it's a Wheel Bug. There's something else that resembles it called an "Assassin Bug." According to the articles I just read, they will bite the crap out of you, and it hurts. I did not know this when, bare-handed, I picked a squash that was crawling with these bugs and shook them off like they were nothing.
After surveying all the damage and all the bugs, I mixed up a batch of insecticide and went to work. I think the squash are past saving, but I want those bugs DEAD. I sprayed the peas and the butterbeans and saw clouds of tiny little winged things take flight. By the time I finished the beans and started back to the shed with the sprayer, the squash bugs had moved from the lower parts of the vines and were staggering around on the upper leaves, and I doused 'em again for good measure.
Currently, the healthiest tomato plants in the garden are those that came from the seeds I planted a couple of months ago. They have never been staked or caged or sprayed for blight, and are just trailing on the ground, au naturale. A few of the leaves are a little blighted, but the blight is nowhere NEAR as bad as it is on the tomatoes in cages that I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and babied. They haven't produced tomatoes yet, but they are blooming, and there is hope.
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