Yep, it's raining again this morning. I hope it doesn't last long or rain hard. Yesterday after work I went to the garden to spray for squash bugs. The wilt-y tomatoes were looking a tad better, giving me hope that the cause of the wilt is too much water and not fusarium wilt. But if we get much rain it will wash off the neem oil that I sprayed on the squash and set the tomatoes back again.
Yesterday's neem oil treatment was the first time I've used the sprayer this year. This is either the 3rd or 4th season we've had it. It's a 2-gallon metal cylinder with a brass spray wand. I paid a lot of money for this thing, hoping to finally have a sprayer that would work for at least one whole season. One year I lost the gasket that goes around the pump and had to order a new one, but otherwise the sprayer has worked well. Last year when I put it away for the winter, it was fine. Yesterday on the very first squirt, my neem oil mixture shot out the SIDE of the wand. Inspection revealed a SPLIT in the brass wand about 2 inches from where it connects to the nozzle. How curious. All I can figure is that there was liquid in the hose when I put it away, and the single-digit winter temperatures froze it and caused it to split the wand.
I probably applied way more neem oil than necessary with liquid squirting out in two directions, but felt lucky that the sprayer held enough pressure to pump. There were a lot of bug eggs on the squash leaves. I cut off the infested leaves and discarded them, then came home and ordered a replacement wand. The "economy" shipping option cost as much as the wand, and I could've bought a whole new sprayer for what it would have cost to ship it overnight. But I got a shipping notice before I went to bed, so hopefully the wand will be here before I need to spray again.
We shelled the white beans after dinner last night. The two half-rows produced almost 5 quarts of beans. About a third of the pods were either too old or too young. We could've had a second picking had I not pulled up the plants, but I'm not sorry that I did it.
Those grocery store dried beans went in the ground on May 3 and popped up right away. It took them a little over 2 months to produce. They survived the spring monsoon and put on a LOT of beans per plant. Since then, we've planted dried grocery store pinto beans (which did not come up) and another round of white beans from Nanny's pantry (those also did not come up) on the remaining half-rows. This is the "low spot," which I tried to fluff up with ground leaves and wood chips. I may have ruined the soil while trying to improve it, or it may be that the seeds were old, or that it was too dry for them to sprout, or that some critter dug them up and ate them. In any case, I still have a pint jar of the first beans, and I'm going to plant them as soon as the soil is dry enough to work.
We'll be eating white beans and cornbread for supper tonight. :)
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