Last batch

This is the last of the potatoes I planted in February. A few weeks ago, the leaves had yellowed and I dug around some pulling off a few of the top-most roots, recovered them and hoped 2 months later I'd have a bumper crop.

The potato plants didn't like that idea.

They decided that my impatience was impertent and all went off and died. I pulled them up today and got nearly another 1.5lbs. I am thinking that putting them right in the ground isn't such a hot idea. I also made the mistake of not hilling them after. I kept meaning to buy the dirt since all our top soil here is a sandy mess but just kept forgetting as I am wont to do.

I still have a good bit of sweet potato slips in the ground but the potatoes are over. This batch at least. I put in about 10lbs over a 100ft row and got back just under 5lbs. I'm not very pleased about this though the taters are especially tasty.

I'm going to set up a new bin for them and try hay growing. I still have time for that. Hopefully, this week I'll be able to get it going. Until then, we're having potatoes for dinner tonight and counting it a victory.

My Poulan's name is Rosie.

I jumped into a cold shower to cool off and rinse the layers of dirt that coated me from head to toe as soon as I came in from outside. It figures the A/C would break on the hottest week of the year. The shower helped immensely.

My hands are sore and my legs are trembling a bit. Hard labor will do that to you. I'm have a single serve black tea cold from the fridge that I'm sipping from a mason jar. I'm thankful I remember to make those a few days ago. I'm munching on a bowl of cold alfredo pasta with raw squash. The crookneck came from the garden. Finally, I have grown successful Cucurbita.

You see, the reason for all this bodily angst was my new best friend. Meet Rosie, my new rear tine tiller. Say "Hello" Rosie.

"Hello, Rosie." Already a smart-ass.

There she is all pretty and new from the store. Everyone I've met today has chuckled over my exhuberance upon aquiring this tiller. I was nearly bouncing waiting in line to pay for the gas I needed to fill my little red jug. Me and a lone guy from the store hoisted it in the trailer bed. He took the heavy end. Then questioned my intentions which I answered with hearty smiles.

I drove home with frequent glances in the rear view mirror. All I could see were the handles and that was enough. My grin stayed affixed the entire ride.

Unloading it was...interesting. In the end I propped a pallet to the back of the trailer and quick as you like it was on the ground. Immediately, I filled her up with petrol and guided her through the wrought iron garden gate. We had to manuver around the snaking vines of garden hose that feed my plants. This isn't our place, we're not investing in high-tech underground watering.

It only took me a moment to get her motor growling. Usually, the pull cord on the gas lawn mower takes me several arm wrenching tries. I was pleased pink with her instant gratification. The garden has been over grown past all caring. I try so hard to keep it weeded but the sheer size and number of unwanted growth is difficult for me to manage on my own. At first I was unsure and got too close to the fence or plants I wanted. I mucked about really being pulled along by a machine beast that ate up the ground like pudding.

Two hours later we were both coated in dirt, moving so smoothly through the garden I could manuever her one handed around bends. I could reach down and toss a stick clear without missing a boot clad step.

She looked pretty before with her electric yellow paint but now she looks good. We tore up half the field keeping out of the small patches of beds previously planted. Tomorrow, I'll rake up the ton of grass and weeds she spat out and maybe give her another go. Weeding the beds by hand will be so much easier and now I have a nice plot to plant my moon and stars. I'm wishing for watermellon by August. I'll also be expanding the pumpkin bed, adding more sunflowers and as far as my email is concerned, another shipment of sweet potato slips are on their way (what else have I ordered that I forgot about?).

It was only a few hours work but my body feels as torn up as the ground we covered. I'll be taking it easy tonight with a good book and lots of fluids. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment at a u-pick peach orchard and will again be working the field at home during the hottest time of the day. I really hope the landlord comes through with the A/C repair man.

Cheers, Rosie, to a job well done.

Fertilizer Failures

The garden has been a huge expense this year. First the tilling, then the fencing, then the seed re-buying, the sprout buying when the seeds failed, the tilling again, irrigation supplies, more fencing, the W.O.R.K. of getting it all together and now, nearly May and the garden is truly a pathetic 1500 square feet.

Which is really sad because soon the weather will get too hot. The green plants visibly wilting in the afternoon sun. Bugs will start coming in and slaughtering whatever fruit dares to even consider ripening. Other than the tomatoes and perhaps the underground roots and legumes, everything out there is visibly failing.

The forty-two cucumbers are only 6" tall at most after sprouting 8 weeks ago (and that height including the ones I bought from seedlings nearly that size already) and sport one tiny 1/2" long cucumber among the lot. The seventy seven pole beans are yellow and sickly looking, around the same size and though they're flowering, have yet to really take off after more than 2 months. The broccoli has produce only 2 small dollar coin sized heads before going to flower out of eighteen plants. Most of the over 100 corn stalks are yellowed and haven't grown since I transplanted them. Same with the 6 eggplants, 12 canteloupes, 30 zucchini, 15 yellow squashes, 6 strawberries etc. etc. you get the point.

Talking with my neighborhood plant guy, my problem is probably fertilization related. Meaning, I have none.

The earth up here in the wide open country is a layer cake of disaster; a half inch of white sandy soil covers a sandy-but-dark soil and six inches or so under that lies a thick redish orange clay. So much different than the rich, loamy ink black soil I had in the city. So ironic, really.

But I have ammended the soil with cured horse manure, epsom salts, coffee grounds and rabbit manure. Two weeks ago I bought a bottle of The Scotts Co. 100250 Miracle Gro Organic Choice Plant Food. The first "chemical" fertlizer that I've allowed myself to ever use. Today, I started the second round of feeding. It's a lot of work filling up a 2 gallon jug and hand watering by 20 square feet at a time. But gardens are work, growing food is work. It's par for the course in farming.

So, what do I do if this doesn't work? The first round didn't really seem to make an impact, I'm not sure what another dose will do. My lovely neighborhood farmer uses 16-4-8 and he gets fantastic results (he doesn't use herbicides, pesticides or fungicides, just the fertlizer in the ground.) And it's making me want to go out and buy a bag to try it.

For those of you that grow organic, what am I missing here? For those that know more about fertilizer than I do, what exactly is in this magic potion of a chemical mix that my garden is so desperate for?

I have always said I prefer local over organic but when it comes to dousing my own plants with unknowns I really am not feeling comfortable with this. Someone show me the way!

I like dirty food.

Years and years ago I held a joint party for my two oldest kids 3rd and 2nd birthday. At the time, I was part of an organic CSA and had been delivered a box of food I was using to make a salad for our guests. I remember this distinctly as a turning point in my food views. I can still recall the tiny rectangular kitchen that had the best pantry I've ever used and the worst lighting, the little window that overlooked the front stoop and the pass through on the opposite side which housed a bar sink for no apparent reason. Out of every apartment I lived in I think I liked that one the best.

My mom was helping me get dishes ready while everyone mingled and the little kids played on the back screened porch in a blow up pool. It was a hot Florida June and the lettuces were huge. I took the romaine out of the box and a bug scurried out from under the bright green leaves.

The reaction from my mother was seared into my brain then and there. "Ewwww! There's a bug in it!" At that moment I realized that I had been conditioned to approve only sterilized food. Food that was ladened with pesticides and herbicides; fungacides and chemical fertlizers. Any of the above chemicals damaging cells to the point that smaller life forms died. Slowly poisioning our larger bodies. I remember replying along the lines of "Why would I want to eat food that would kill other things that ate it?"

My mother grew up on a piece of land in the sticks of New Hampshire that had an adjoining plot of fruits and vegetables. I grew up there too. As a child I would walk the field with my grandmother, gorge myself of sunkissed raspberries and sneak peeks into the dug out cold cellar -where I was not allowed- that held the secret delights of my grandma's canned foods. Then there was that time when my grandpa hung a gutted buck in the backyard. The contrast of crimson slashed through the downy brown I will never forget. The fur swayed in the night air as he hung by his back legs. I consoled the mounted deer head in the livingroom later, promising that I'd free him one day.

Our food came from the land. She grew up with the dirt, sweat and blood of farm life. I wonder when it become a purified experience for her? For me?

Lately, I've been finding that innocuous scene from a kitchen past rolling through my head. Such a short, simple phrase has had an enormous impact on my life and I find myself uttering the same question I gave in reply:

Why would I want to consume a food that would kill something else that ate it?

Every time I silently answer myself, I don't. And I can't fathom why anyone else would either.

first true harvest

The first true harvest of the year has been radishes. I bought these as teeny plants at the U-pull place and honestly didn't think they'd grow. I really bought them for the leaves. Rabbits like a good radish green. I had taken my iPhone out to the garden to take photos of polinating squash blossoms by hand and noticed that the potato and the radish were both in flower.

Technology is such a funny thing. At some points I feel that we have too much of it. That it impeeds on our lives too much. I can't stand the glow of tiny power lights in the bedroom at night. But yesterday in the field it was a wonderous thing. I jumped on Safari and within a few minutes knew that the radishes needed to be pulled and the potatoes were fine. It was like having a seasoned gardener in my back pocket.

I also take most of the photos on the blog and Facebook page with my iPhone just because it's so much easier to take outside than my bigger camera (and I feel safer with it in it's Otterbox than the Pentax on a string around my neck). It's nice to be able to chronicle the progress of the farm, the sizes and looks of poultry as they grow, see how others live and do things, the beauty of life as we live and share it.

It makes me sad for those that came before the invention of photographs. It makes me wonder how much we here in 2011 are ignorant of because they lacked inexpensive, easy forms of documentation. How amazing it would be to look back on my Penobscot relatives and see what their lives were like. 

Or maybe they were better for it? Maybe they lived fuller, deeper knowing that the only memories of time spent was only as thick as the impressions in their minds.

Honey Badgers eat Local

My kids are obsessed with the Honey Badger. Which isn't really a badger and doesn't actually eat honey. They know this but they still love to pretend to be Honey Badgers whenever a new bottle of honey comes in the house. They eat it on everything. Our recent favorite is organic peanut butter, my chunky pear jam I canned a few weeks ago and Thomas Honey, a locally produced raw honey we can get at the weekly farmers market and True Value.

I have never lived in a place that I can get honey at a hardware store or canning jar lids and tomato plants at the gas station. It's a little surreal at times.

Over the weekend I missed out on yet another bee keeping class. This tallys up to four over the past two years I couldn't make it to. It's a tad bit depressing. As if the Universe just isn't ready for me to be exposed to bees. I'm trying to be patient but my squash is suffering from lack of polinization. I've had to pull off about 5 shriveled squashes so far. Bees would be so welcomed here.

I tried to go out today to hand polinate (which includes muck boots, q-tips and mood music) but it was a bust. You see, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, the epitome of gardens and summer produce, have both male and female flowers. Both need to be in bloom and have a qualifying polinator to create a vegetable. Today all my female flowers were brightly blooming. I could see them from the porch and yet not a single male flower was even close to opening. I'll try again in a few days time.

Last year I grew only 3 teeny zucchini. I was throughly discouraged. I'm  hoping a little human intervention will help.

End of the March Recap

This month hasn't been terribly productive. While we have gotten new livestock in the form of 4 rabbits, 4 ducks, 2 geese, 6 turkeys and 3 barred rock chicks we haven't really done anything. I'm adding in some photos of how the garden looks now, at the end of the month so I don't have to do a separate post. I know, I'm totally lazy.



 Right now we're in a waiting phase. Waiting for the animals to grow, seeds to sprout, plants to start producing, Christmas birds to start laying. This week is wet (yeah! the first in over 2 weeks!) so even watering is on hold. Today the rain came down in buckets. I felt a pang that we didn't have the rain barrels set up.

What we have done

-butchered and froze 2 of our meat birds (by our little ol' selves)

- planted, planted, planted

- finished the garden fence

-set up irrigation

-planted most of the Big Field with corn, amaranth, quinoa and sunflower (that hasn't sprouted after three weeks but we got to use the new seeder)

-planted more stuff

-sold a couple dozen eggs
-mulched

-build a dog house and brooder for the larger baby poultry out of pallets

-canned pears

-cleaned rabbit cages

-sheared a rabbit

Really, nothing much happened.

u-pull?

The past few weeks I've driven down the county road on my way to the Farmer's Market the next town over. On my way there's a little hand written sign advertising Tomato Plants U-Pull.

U-PULL? I have never heard of such a thing. And each week I drove by curious but restrained from driving my van chock full of kids down some lonely dirt road just to see what I'd find.

Yesterday, I checked the Farm section of Craigslist and found the U-Pull tomato guy's ad. According to it, the plants were .10 a piece, you hand pull from the ground. With the garden mulched and the man taking a break from fencing the garden for lunch, I decided to take a trip over by myself to see what it was all about. Even if I only got ten plants I'd be beating my current price of .50 a seedling over the head with a shovel.

I now wished I had taken photos but to be honest the lonely dirt road then lead me to a large property with various trailers and buildings in disrepair, rusted out trucks, sun crisp fields of grapes and a little patch of PVC skirted earth crowded out with thousands of seedlings. There was no one around and according to other various hand written signs the plant pulling worked on an honor system. A little handmade lock box with a slot was designated for payment and a warning not to dig the plants "hand pull only". A table set up with a bucket of water and newspapers under a brick served as a processing point for keeping moist the freshly pulled roots.

Chickens squaked but I couldn't see them. Dogs barked from inside various buildings. No one was around and I expected to hear banjo music at any moment. I kept the car doors open and keys in my pocket.



The delivery was poor but the concept was genious.

All it would take would be a lay out of pvc to denote the different types of plants and a few seed packets or left overs from planting. It was heavily seeded, overcrowding was prominent but I was able to hand pick the plants I wanted, carefully extracting them from the soil.

I ended up with two hundred plants that have been transplanted into my garden. As of this morning they have almost all (save maybe 5-8) perked up. I got radish, broccoli, tomato, kale, zucchini and carrots (not holding out on the carrots since they don't like to be transplanted, I only got 10). They had many other varieties like mustards, hot peppers, other types of tomato and collards.

This might be an interesting venture to make a little money on the side with very little work. And a good lesson on following curious signs.

Garden's growing

Bareroot Heirloom Raspberry planted 2 weeks ago.

The garden is coming along nicely. I'm trying not to think too hard about being nearly 4 weeks behind on planting. It's starting to get H.O.T. down here in the South and with that comes a host of wonderfully destructive pests. Already the flies are buzzing and I'm fairly certain a couple mosquitoes have flown by.

A butterfly visiting the onions.

The weeds are poking through everywhere. I need to get down some mulch to help deter them and for water retention, the summers gonna be a scorcher. It always is. There are huge patches of land that had been tilled (and tilled and tilled) that are just covered in a thick green blanket of Bahaia (have I mentioned I hate this grass?) that now needs to be rototilled yet again. I could do it by hand but I will probably kill myself and someone has to be around to watch the kids, so that's out.

First teeny tomato.

There is still a lot of ground to get planted. After more than 2 weeks the quinoa, amaranth and strawberry popcorn haven't made a single sprout in the Big Field. I'm not holding out much hope for them. Which means if we want to have any of those I need to replant them (translate- buy more seeds) in the Garden. And for some reason everything that sprouts in the cold frames has been dying. One day they're out there and the next poof! gone.

Pole beans



Lack of seed sprouts means more money spent on seedlings. The whole debacle of loosing every seed we owned and having to replace them is now being lost to whatever reason. The leeks never came up, 40 basil sprouts died, most of the cukes are going but very, very slowly. While I've been getting good deals on the sprouts (6 pack for $3 usually, some of the tomatoes have been over 12" tall) it's still more money out the door. I'm just running too far into the season to start things from seeds again.

Rows of potatoes and peanuts.

There are still some good things going on. The 100' of potatoes I planted from a $2 batch of locally produced red potatoes four weeks ago have just about all sprouted with some exceptions. The 100' of peanuts is doing equally well. I put approximately 10lbs of potatoes in the ground. If I can get 25lbs back I'll mark that a success. Now I will start mulching and building up the hills around them.

New sweet corn starts.



I'm still learning, now into my third year. I haven't ever attempted anything to this scale. My garden last year had 3 tomato plants, this year I already have close to 60. It's an investment all around. One that I hope will start repaying us very soon (my budget can't take much more "investing"). I'll be pleased to get enough food to can and eat multiple meals a week fresh. If I can sell a little on the side to put back the money out, I'll be even happier.

Double tomato flower.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

Around the Garden

I've been working hard at getting the garden done. It was originally going to be 50x150' but the grass just is making it impossible, so I've reduced it to 100x50'. Some of what I wanted to plant were going to go out to the larger, unfenced field, like the corn and possibly some of the squashes so reducing the plot isn't such a big deal.

Here are the tomatoes. I'll be adding in some basil and carrots around them as soon as I can.

The cucumbers I planted two Sunday's ago have already sprouted. I'm looking forward to pickling this year for the first time.

The broccoli isn't doing as well as I'd hoped. A frost and the delay in getting the garden done prevented me from planting them in the ground and they suffered for it.

I'm hoping the 12 peppers I planted do well. I picked up some sproutlings from a local nursery to go along with the six that made it out of the seeds I started. They look pretty healthy and I have some interesting heirloom varieties I can't wait to try. Again, this is another for the canning squad. I'm hoping to get a good supply of sundried tomatoes and sauce out of these plants.

And another part of the garden that isn't doing as well as I'd hoped -the lettuce bed. Again, the delay in gardening to plant the sprouts and a frost I didn't expect stunted much. Those two large ones are arugula I grew from seeds last year that was still growing when we moved. I yanked it up about 4 weeks ago, threw them in a grocery bag and hauled them 150 miles North and they're doing just fine in the new garden. Since they're so hearty I let them go to seed hoping I can save some for future planting.

Other than that, I have about 180 seeds I'm waiting to emerge from some flats on the porch. I'm hoping to make a couple more cold frames this weekend to transfer them to. I ordered Precision Products GS2005 5-Pound Capacity Garden Seeder off Amazon last week and hope it will arrive this week so I can start the sunflowers, quinoa, amaranth and corn in the West Field. I won't be able to do the burn like the neighbor suggested so I'm just going to plant in the 2 large swaths he made for a fire break.

Much, much more to come!

Wonderful (what is it?)

I call it Wonderful but anyone know what this is really called? I want another one.

Garden update

Sunday the Percherons came back to disc and level the field. I had never thought getting virgin dirt ready for seeds would be quite so much work. The Bahia grass was like an impenetrable force field weaving ridiculously spindly vines that acted like they were made of steel. Six weeks from the first discing, three trips from draft horses, talk of a burn, and finally the finishing touches with a tractor and we have a garden field.

It's still not perfect. I still have to go through every row with a hand cultivator/mini-hoe thing and manually chop out the thick winding roots that run deep and muck up my garden beds. I can't even explain this tool but it is now on my list of Things-I-Can-Never-Live-Without. I'll have to take a photo, maybe someone can give it a name other than "Wonderful".

Then we started dropping posts to run fence along the perimeter. The old school Percheron owning farmer tilted the corners of his moustached mouth ever so slightly when I professed the desire to contain my plants. His seventy-seven years of gardens needed no barriers. I'm the new kid on the block. Sometimes I wonder if I glow green in the presence of these Farming Gods.

I have no shame siphoning information off anyone that cares to respond to what I'm sure are assinine questions. The quietness I usually encounter after my mouth closes I'm not all together certain isn't their self control reining in a laugh or serious contemplation. Perhaps they're wondering when I'll leave, taking a mental bet on the month farming will break me. I'll bet they think "August.". Heaven and Hell both know I'm not looking forward to that month.

But I'm not leaving. I can laugh at myself and my questions. And I'll ask them anyway.

digging out.

So far, all this week I've accomplished is feeling depressed and searching for things on the internet that might help. Regardless to say, this hasn't been a productive week. I'm happy to just get myself dressed in the morning and feed the kids three squar-ish times a day. We haven't made any decisions about very much of anything. The waiting and not knowing is killing me. I'm a Virgo. I like to have a plan.

Cold frame built from the left over chicken coop roof.

I'm trying to focus on the things we can do. The baby rabbits that should come in a month. A cow is back on the idea board. The wet weather has made it impossible for the draft horse team to come back to plow. My skin is itching to get seeds in the ground. Patience is not my virtue.

Inside the cold frame.

I messed up earlier this week and left the plastic box with all my seeds in it outside overnight and it rained. I woke up to 1/4" of water lining the bottom of the box and seed packets so drenched they disintegrated when I tried to carefully peel them apart. It rained for nearly 15 hours straight. Heavy, fat drops more like a high-pressure bathroom shower than a rain storm. I saved as much as I could, which frankly wasn't very much at all. So perhaps not having the garden ready doesn't really matter as now I have to replace over 150 seed packets before I can even start.

All gone. Sorry, Jessica who gifted me with the "Mystery" seeds and a few others.

The baby goats have a new home we'll be taking them to tomorrow, now to break it to the kids. Today was Farmer's Market day but the roads are flooded out with yet another rain storm.  I'm getting a little tired of all this percipitation when I have very little need of it right now. So, back to forcing myself to be happy in the moment, be grateful for what I have, thankful for what problems I don't.

Hey, maybe we'll get a rainbow later. Who knows?

Things I do have.



Busy.

Climbing me looking for dinner.

Friday marked the week's end for us. The kids and I ran into town for goat hay and ten pounds of raw wool. The wool will be cleaned and blended with Angora into roving and yarn. I can't wait to offer it for sale in our Etsy store. Rabbit wool from my own bunnies, Sheep wool from a neighbor raising an endangered breed and a small family mill in my state. I've raised the bunnies from babies. I know the shepherd. I've shook hands with the sheep. I'll drop it off in person; discuss with the owner the best methods and blendings in the spring.

It feels good to support local. It feels even better to be part of the process.

My friend and her family came that night for a weekend visit. I'm not used to hosting overnighters as my previous house wasn't size accomodating. They've bought land just down the street and plan to start a self-sufficient farm like us. Nine kids and four adults somehow fit in for two nights without fighting. The first night, excitement was riding the kids, like the eve before a holiday but so much more because it bounced between them all and back again.

Saturday they awoke with much more energy than the parents, siphoned from some magical place inacessable to grown-ups. I wish I had a tenth of that bottled. I'd be rich. Or at least not quite so tired. After some errands, we started putting up the fence around the pasture. This was built for a horse farm with a beautiful wood slat fence running the perimeter. A beautiful fence that goats would walk right through. My shoulders and arms feel leadened. Tired. Old.

In two days we ran wire fence between the posts, anchoring in between for a little extra goat resisance, pounding in three-quarter inch staples by hand across some two hundred plus feet and four feet up. We'll need another 330 foot roll plus a good chunk of a third before it's ready for the animals. We hadn't even had to sink the posts since the pasture was already there, I can't imagine setting that up from scratch. PX90 has nothing on farm work.

I decided today was the day for breeding the rabbits. At breakfast Duncan got a mate. The weather has been stable with warm days and cool nights. I think the last of the frosts is behind us even if the almanac warns into March. Florida hates the cold and shrugs it off like a thick coat as quick as it can in lieu of flip flops and mosquito repellant. I'm hoping when Flora builds her nest there won't be any question further question of cold. This will be our first litter even though we've owned rabbits for over a year. Today was the first time I thought of kits and had no doubts. Sometimes you have doubts or worries and surge on through, other times you just sit and wait them out.

If all goes well, come May we'll have fluffy white baby rabbits for sale.

The rabbit area and chicken coops got mucked out and spread on the garden. Tomorrow Blake is coming back over to finish the tilling with his horses. I'm trying hard to hide my giddiness behind the stoic expression of something more than a novice. I don't think it's working very well. Then the post pounding starts. More wire will get stretched; rabbit-proof fencing this time. I have sprouts starting green life in yogurt cups, lettuce and strawberries from the farmer's market waiting for more room to spread their roots. Even more seeds are on the way. Tri-colored pole beans, strawberry popcorn and turnips, buckwheat cover crop, white radishes and heritage lettuce. The garden will be a wonderland by June.

Leeloo went off-leash for the first time today. I'm marvelling at how well her training has turned out over the course of just one short week. She sat, she came, she played. Tonight, we went out together off-leash again without a hitch. She's like a new dog. Even if she did gnaw the corner off the guest's sheet. I suppose we can't all be perfect.

Tonight I'm ending on a high note. Yes, I'm tired. Yes, I ache worse than the time I stupidly signed up for a personal trainer at Bally's. The house is a mess and the list of things to do didn't really go down at all regardless of the near endless work of three days. But I'm pleased.

Garden Redux

We're winterizing the garden now. Our first year's attempt has, with few exceptions, crashed and burned. If anything, it's made me more determined and maybe a little smarter.

Our goal on our five acres is to have a large, self sustaining garden. The tiny self-watering boxes we have now are a drop in the bucket compared with what we'll have to have in order to eliminate produce purchasing. But it being my first year seriously growing anything, starting small was a necessity.

I'll freely admit that this summer growing season was horrible. My small victories when my motley crew of plants started producing quickly turned into side-show horrors. I never knew bugs proliferated so quickly. Thick, wriggling layers of bugs coated the supple vines and sucked the baby fruits into wrinkled lumps.

FYI assassin beetles fly. When the more than inch long bug, with long spidery legs and a formidable needle nose flew at me after I determinedly sprayed it with orange oil, I swear I could hear him laugh. I have no shame in telling you I gave a most girly shriek and ran for cover, those bastards are scary. And did I mention they fly?? I have a thing about freaky airborne bugs, especially freaky airborne bugs that bite.

The stink bugs and shield beetles were no better but at least they're smaller. Aphids were a nuisance we had as well. Then the eight days of rains drown out over half the plant varieties leaving only a couple of stubborn greenies behind.

Butternut Squash before the invasion.

But that's all past now. I'm hoping to have learned my lessons with the bugs and rains and next summers garden will be heartier, healthier and much much more productive. It really can't get much less productive. I'm picking up some special cloth to cover the beds to organically deter the pests and spending the winter building the frames for said covers. My goal is to do this free or cheap and I'll update on that when I get it worked out.

I ordered music garlic, yellow and bunching onions and a potato mix to winterize the beds. Plus, a bit of sugar snap peas to grow indoors. I'm hoping the fact the produce will be under the ground or in the house will help with pests. I'm still nursing a single very late blooming pepper to harvest I still have high hopes at least those jerks of the bug world didn't fly away with those.