First Squash

We picked our first mess of squash on Sunday.  We gave some of it to our son and his family, and sauteed the rest (with onions and hot peppers) for supper that night.  I picked another 2-gallon bucket full this afternoon.  This weekend I'm going to drag the canning equipment out of the attic and make some squash pickle when the next batch of squash gets ready.

The garden is looking good, so far.  Beans and cucumbers are blooming.  Tomato plants have tangerine-sized tomatoes on them.  The okra is beginning to grow.  The rows are clean (mostly).

I watered the tomatoes and the squash today.  The hydrant closest to my garden is not in working order, and I had to use the one on the back of Nanny's house.  This required stringing several hoses together, dragging them for miles, and then dragging them all back and un-stringing them once the watering was done.  No more of that.  One day this week I'm going to buy the biggest hose cart/reel I can find.

Mid-June Maintenance

It's been hard to work in the garden for the past few weeks.  We've had sporadic rains, making the soil too wet to work.  Yesterday afternoon, I was finally able to do some maintenance: tilled the grassy middles, sprayed for bugs and blight, used the hoe where the big tiller would not go.

We ate our first ripe tomato yesterday.  It came from a potted patio plant, which already had a little green tomato on it when I bought it.  The plants in the garden are pretty far from having ripe tomatoes, but they are coming along nicely.

The Grandson's tiger eye beans are beginning to bloom. 

We'll be eating squash and zucchini by the weekend.

The pepper plants are going nuts making peppers.  This seems odd to me, as the pepper plants don't generally kick into gear in our garden until later in the season.  I hope they don't poop out before the tomatoes get ripe so that I can use them in salsa.

Blight Control

Today, I fired the first round - or so I thought - in the battle with blight.  Doused the tomatoes with fungicide, put down some landscape fabric around them, and snipped off any leaves that were touching the ground or even thinking about touching the ground.  I only thought that I was firing the first round because I had not closely examined the plants; I thought I was making a pre-emptive strike; in truth, the blight was one step ahead of me.  Some of those lower leaves that I cut off were already looking yellow and sickly.  It's a good thing I struck when I did. 

Watch it rain tonight or tomorrow and wash off the fungicide.  :-\

Re-Bean

Very few of the beans I planted on 5/16 actually came up.  Maybe I planted them too deep.  Maybe the moon wasn't right.  Who knows?  In any case, I re-planted today.  The purple hull peas need re-planting, too, but I'm out of seeds at the moment.

The squash and zucchini seeds sprouted nicely, as did the cucumbers.

Tomatoes and peppers growing nicely.  Some of the peppers even have peppers big enough to eat.  Go, peppers!

Memorial Day Check-In

According to the Facebook tag, it was on April 7 that the Grandson and I planted some tomato seeds in those cool little expand-o peat pellets.  Of the 25 (or so) seeds we planted, only about 10 sprouted.  Today, I planted them in the garden.  I should've waited to let him help me plant them.  Maybe I'll put him in charge of their care. 

The rest of the garden is coming along so-so.  The first planting happened 10 days ago.  The seeds are starting to come up, but not as thickly as I would like.  It has rained several times since the seeds went in the ground, which compacted the dirt on top of the seeds.  Now, the soil has a crust, with a rupture down the center of each row where the seeds are trying to poke through.  I hope the rest of them make it; otherwise, I'll have to re-plant.

The SkeeterVac is humming along nicely.  We turned it on a week ago today, and I was worried that since we replaced the standard regulator with one made for gas grills we'd burn too much gas.  The tanks usually last for 14 days.  If this one runs out much sooner than that, I'll order the "official" one.  It seems to be catching bugs about like normal.  I wish it had caught the one that bit me above the eyebrow a couple of days ago.  It raised a monstrous knot on my head, and turned my eyelid an alarming shade of fuschia.

SkeeterVac Review - Year 3

I was bitten by mosquitoes in the yard last week, and decided it was time to fire up the SkeeterVac.  We put on a new propane bottle and did the lighting routine.  We could hear the igniter clicking, but the machine wouldn't start.  I went online to the SkeeterVac "troubleshooting" page, performed all of the suggested remedies, still nothing.  The Husband took the fuel filter out of the gas line, and it looked rusted, so we ordered a new one.  It came in the mail at the end of the week.  We installed it and did the lighting routine again.  Still nothing.

I called the SkeeterVac hotline and spoke to a nice lady who gave me some other suggestions.  One suggestion was that we turn the gas knob only 1/2 a turn (as opposed to 2 full turns per the instruction manual).  Tried that.  Nothing.  The lady said maybe our "regulator" was bad, or maybe the gas tank, itself, was bad.  The Husband tried the gas tank with a different gas appliance, and it worked fine, but we could not test the regulator, as it would not fit the other appliance. 

We found a "How to Fix your SkeeterVac" video on YouTube that showed how to disassemble the unit and clean the various valves.  We tried all those tricks.  Still nothing.  Okay, so maybe the regulator is bad. 

We went to the hardware store and bought a regulator meant for gas grills.  The opening in this new gas line was bigger than the opening in the old one, and when I dropped the fuel filter into the opening, it went right down the tube!  We shook it out, connected the hose without the filter, and the machine fired right up.

Probably I will order an "official" regulator this week, as I suspect the machine is using too much gas. 

At Last....

(You know the tune.)

Aaaat laaaaast, my love has come along
With a tractor and some disk blades.
Now I can sing my garden song.

Eggplaaaaaant, squash, zucchini, too.
Tomatoes and bell peppers.
Bush beans from lakes of blue.

(Ok, ok...yes, enough.)

Seriously, The Husband disked the garden yesterday, and I went at it with the tiller this afternoon.  Tilled up 7 rows.  Nearly killed me.  But there's a threat of rain tonight, and I wanted to get the plants in the ground while it's dry enough.

All that stuff you saw above, plus some carrots, went in the ground today.  And I still have lots more room.  If it doesn't rain, tomorrow I'll plant some tiger eye beans that my grandson picked out of the seed catalog (no idea what they'll be like) and some cucumbers. 

(Note to self:  yes, you put down fertilizer in the rows you planted.)