Mysteries Solved

I stopped by the dollar store on my way to work yesterday morning to buy a ball of jute string.  This store has a good greenhouse and other needful gardening stuff.  My friend D. works there as manager of the greenhouse and is an avid gardener, herself.  We got right down to the business of talking about our vegetable gardens.

She, too, has a load of volunteer tomatoes from last year's crop.  Her philosophy on these volunteers was the same as mine: if they're in the paths between the rows, they get chopped down; if they're out of the way of the hoe/tiller/feet, they can stay.  "I'm not tending to them, either," she said.  "I'm not staking them, or feeding them.  They're on their own.  They either make it, or they don't."  She said she has great clumps of them coming up under her green bean "teepees," and she is curious to see how well the beans and tomatoes will co-exist in the same space. 

She also said that she has thoroughly had it with weeding and has decided to mow the grass in the middles rather than remove it.  I'm kind of thinking that she might regret this decision next year, but we'll see.  If it works, I might try it next year, for I'm not too keen on weeding, myself.

The dollar store had only small balls of jute left in stock.  I bought three of them.  Yesterday evening, just after dinner, The Husband and I went to the garden to string the jute between the two rows of fence posts I'd set in the ground on the rattlesnake bean rows.  I'd strung baling wire between them, one strand 6" from the ground, and one strand across the tops of the posts.  The plan was to tie the jute strings vertically, top and bottom, so that the beans can run up them.  The Husband and I each took a ball of jute and set to work on our separate rows.  It took about 30 seconds for us to realize that undertaking a job that requires repetitive bending so soon after dinner was not a good idea. 

After we used up the jute (I hadn't bought enough to finish the job), I showed my husband some dime-sized animal tracks I'd seen while I was setting the fence posts.  There was a double row of them.  Each impression was only 1/2" away from the previous one, but the two rows were a full hand-breadth apart.  They looked like mini-bulldozer tracks, and I had not been able to imagine what kind of animal had made them.  "Turtle tracks," The Husband said, almost immediately.  Ah, yes.  Mystery solved.  Nothing else would've taken such small steps. 

We have entertained turtles in the garden in previous years.  They will nip the bottoms of the ripe tomatoes that they can reach - and they can reach surprisingly high - and they will help themselves to cucumbers and anything else that's low to the ground.  We told Nanny to add turtles to the list of things that The Nephew can shoot if he finds them in the garden.  I wonder if turtle soup can be made from just any old kind of turtle.  ;)

The Husband and I solved one other outdoor mystery this morning.

Near Easter, we bought four ducklings to put on the small pond beside our house.  The idea was that they would help thin out the mosquito population and perhaps rid the pond of the billions of perch that have taken over.  Our daughter-in-law raised the baby ducks in her chicken coop until we thought they had grown large enough to fend for themselves.  We brought them home about a month ago.  Two of the ducks disappeared - I mean COMPLETELY disappeared - before the week was out.  No signs of a struggle, no feathers laying about.  Just gone.  A week later, a third duck disappeared.  Same deal.  No feathers, no beaks or feet on the bank.  I did find a little bit of white fluff on the opposite side of the property, but couldn't be sure that it wasn't just fluff from the cottonwood trees.

Over the next month, the remaining duck survived to be a pretty good-sized duck.  It had learned to come when we'd go down to the pond with a cup of ground corn, calling "Ducky-duck?"  It would come waddling around the bank, whistling and quacking, ready to eat.  We wondered where we could find a full-grown duck to bring home so he/she wouldn't be so lonesome. 

Last week, Ducky-duck vanished.  

This morning, The Husband called, "Come here.  Hurry!"  I hustled to the living room.  He was standing at the window.  "Look on the swing set." 

There were two huge hawks perched on the swing set, and one hopping around in the yard, probably two parents and an offspring.  A bluejay was swooping the one on the ground. 

Last week, I'd heard screeching in the woods at that back corner of the yard, the very corner where I'd found the white fluff. 


The Husband and I said, at the same time, "That's what went with the ducks." 

I hope the bluejay is more successful at guarding her babies than we were. 

Seeds Up!

Thanks to the good rain, the rattlesnake beans, zucchini, and okra seeds shot out of the ground sometime between Sunday evening and Tuesday afternoon. 

Today, I hammered metal fence posts into the ground along the bean rows and strung wire between them, top and bottom.  As soon as I can find my roll of jute (or buy another one), I'm going to make a web between the two wires for the beans to climb. 

The garden is looking really good.  Corn is shoulder high, but isn't "tassling" yet.  Squash are producing.  Tomatoes are coming along.  Cucumbers are blooming, and here and there I'm seeing tiny little pickles.  The peppers are peppering.  The volunteer butterpeas are blooming.  Even the carrots are doing well!

No sign of any bugs today, except one squash bug.  I picked him off and crushed him with my shoe.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll need to spray fungicide again to stay ahead of the blight.

More Rain

The chatter at work this morning was mostly about the creek-raising rain we got last night.

"Y'all can thank me for that," I said.  "I sprayed the garden yesterday morning."

From across the room, quiet-voiced Esther said, "Nope.  *I* did it."

I raised my eyebrows.  "What did you do?"

"I shot a snake," she said.  "And hung it, belly up, on the fence."

I had to concede that a snake-shooting trumps a garden-spraying.  Way to go, Esther!

Rain

It's raining right now.  Sort of.  It's an indecisive rain, one that falls intermittently between bouts of sunshine.  But it's rain, and we need it.  I heard the weatherman say that we're 12" behind for the year.  This should bring up the okra and rattlesnake beans I planted this week.

It's also going to wash off the fungicide and insecticide that I sprayed yesterday.  I'll have to do it all over again this weekend.  :-\ 

Actually, it's not a bad thing in terms of the squash.  After doing some reading, I'm not certain that the "BT" stuff I sprayed will kill squash bugs.  I bought a different kind of insecticide today, one that's supposed to be "eco-friendly" (though I'm not sure that the words "insecticide" and "eco-friendly" belong in the same sentence, unless there's a "not" between them).

Maintenance, Rattlesnake Beans, and Zucchini

Today was a beautiful day, so much cooler than the previous few days.  I was in the garden by 4 p.m., tilling up two rows for the rattlesnake beans that have been sitting on my kitchen table for weeks.  (I decided not to plant it with the corn, reasoning that if the raccoons take down the corn, they'll take down the beans with it.)  Just as I finished the tilling, I looked across the garden and noticed that two of my squash plants had wilted since yesterday.  I turned off the tiller and went for a closer look.  It appeared that both plants had been nicked with a hoe.  This was something of a relief, as I had feared the damage was from cutworms. 

But while I was inspecting the plant stems, I found bugs.  Many of them were copulating.  Some had already copulated, evidenced by little patches of brown eggs I saw on a few of the leaves.  I nearly had a stroke.

Luckily, I had stopped by the garden center for supplies - fungicide, insecticide, and fertilizer. 

Four hours later, the garden had been fungicided, BTd, and fertilized, and the beans had been planted.  We ought to be good to go for a week or more.

Before I sprayed, I picked about half a dozen squash, enough for our supper and Nanny's.  We sauteed ours with onions and ate it with Mexican cornbread.  Yum.

@!^%#

See the two vehicles in this picture?  My garden is between them and behind them about 100 feet. 

See the field?  A farmer rented this field from Nanny a few weeks ago.  Last Saturday, he planted soybeans using the "no-till" method.  The next day, he came back and sprayed broadleaf grass killer.  He told Nanny that he would spray low to the ground, and it would not damage anything in her yard.

The following Tuesday, this is how my corn looked:

The cucumbers and squash got a dose, too.

I was madder than a hornet.

Thankfully, the big shed and a smaller tool shed blocked the spray from most of the garden, but some of the chemical drifted through a gap between the tool shed and the tree line.  The entire rows of squash, cucumbers, and corn got it, all the way to the far end of the garden.  It looks like these plants are going to survive, but I'm still mad.  And the worst may be yet to come.  Once the beans sprout, he's planning to come back with Round-Up in his tank.  I don't know what to do to protect my garden, except to stretch black plastic across the "gap," and judging from how far the first herbicide drifted, this tactic may not be enough.

* * * * * *

"You're up mighty early," Nanny called from the back porch a few seconds after I walked past her kitchen window this morning. 

"I'm trying to hit the garden before the sun does," I said.  My plan was to chop around the plants, run the tiller up the middles, and then do some serious watering.  I went to the tool shed, grabbed my favorite hoe, and started chopping weeds on the pepper row.  A few minutes later, I looked up to find Nanny working among the cucumbers.  Together we made pretty short work of the squash and cucumber rows.  Nanny started on the corn rows while I went to drag the tiller out of the shed.

"How big does corn have to be before it can be laid by?" Nanny asked me as I was gassing up the tiller.

"I don't know," I said.  "What does 'laid by' mean?"

"It means we can quit chopping it."

"Oh.  Well, I think that corn can be laid by the day after Memorial Day," I told her.  Since today is Memorial Day, it brought us both a measure of relief.

About an hour later, The Husband showed up and offered to finish the tilling.  I let him, and started laying out the soaker hose among the cucumbers.  By the time I finished laying out the hoses and getting the water going, he'd finished the tilling and had picked up the hoe that I'd laid aside.  In a few minutes, I heard Nanny call to The Husband, "I see you over there, leaning on your hoe in the shade."  Before either of us could respond, she added, "Oh my goodness...I just heard my mama talking."

"You sounded just like her," The Husband said.

I did not know Grandmaw, so I wisely kept my mouth shut.

But I looked up a few minutes later, and caught them both leaning on their hoes in the shade.

It took me about two more hours to finish the watering.  During this time, I sank in the mud as I moved the soaker hoses from row to row.  It's a miracle I got out with my shoes.

Squash Blossoms

My boss turned me loose early today (bless her), and I've spent the afternoon running the tiller in the garden, working on my farmer tan. 

The oldest of the squash plants - the batch that came up from the first planting - have squash on them!  I bet we'll be eating them by next weekend.

The corn is a good foot tall.    As I was tilling  past it, I wondered if my idea about interplanting it with pole beans is a good idea.  It is almost a sure bet that the raccoons will eventually push the cornstalks over; when that happens, the beans will go down with the corn, and that will be one confounded mess.  

I've been trying to think of ways to foil the raccoons.  What I need is about three mean Dobermans.  ;)