Pickleworms
Nice.
New plant this year (cucumbers)
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New pest this year (pickleworms)
After being tipped off by Mrs cohutt that a worm had taken up residence in a cucumber harvested earlier this week, I spotted the dreaded pile o’ frass on a couple yesterday:
(For those who have forgotten my squash vine borer and tomato fruit worm posts last summer, frass= worm or more accurately caterpillar sh*t.)
I decided I would investigate since where there is frass, there is a frassing insect….
Nice…
The guilty party, a pickelworm
I thought it odd that the cucumbers would get these where the “preferred” summer squash was nearby. (The mrs cohutt informed me that they have been in some of the squash too.)
Control?
Lots of luck (see link above).
Beez
Make nature work
The loofah gourd vines are feeding the local bee population quite well. The yellow blooms are prolific and stay open for most of the day (vs the nocturnal birdhouse gourd blooms). Every morning these bumblebees are lying stoned & face down in the pollen and as you can see don’t mind sharing with an occasional honeybee.
The Thai basil is also attracting a crowd, although the two that were on this bloom cluster managed to fly off while I was adjusting the camera… I liked the picture regardless….
Harvesting & Processing vs Blog Posting
Blog Posting takes time (even when the blogger has lazily opted for less substance and more pictures) and time has been tight lately.
Why?
Well, for one, my day job has been perking at an elevated stress level of late and I find that I am noticing the Xanax commercials more than usual. A week long connection issue on my aging Dell gave me fits until this morning (I hope) when I figured out that there were 5+ years of cached java applets hanging around on my hard drive *perhaps* causing browser dementia.
Additionally, I have the usual over-reaching active home project list (Note to Mrs cohutt: It isn’t chaos, it is 23 separate projects being executed from memory).
But the real reason is, after months of pushing ahead to get the “garden infrastructure” in place (garden infrastructure sounds really important and of substantial scale doesn’t it?), the yield from the garden is coming in at a rate that is wearing me out.
Yesterday evening I turned another 50 fat jalapenos into 100 cheese and bacon stuffed “poppers”. Last weekend another dozen quarts of sauce plus several pints of salsa got put on the pantry shelves. Tonight I experimented with a different processing method and a large batch of tomato paste is on the stove. Romas were slowly dehydrating in the convection oven on 3 different days this week and another 25 lbs are in the sunroom awaiting their mummification. The lima beans are coming in at a trickle now but the floodgates are about to open.
I’m not complaining, this is what I told myself I wanted when I set out on this path 2 years ago. So far it still holds my interest and while we are still early in the learning curve, we have gotten much better at it in a very short time.
Anyway, that’s my pontification for the evening. If the internet connection stays reliable, my posting pace should get back on track.
Harvest evening:
Inventory check:
Paste (in a few hours):
A bucket of romas with most of the dihydrogen monoxide safely removed
I go away for a week…..
and a jungle sprouts in my backyard:
But I can live with it:
The well is officially working now; it runs between 40 and 60 psi @ 15+ gpm, crystal clear. My plumbing work held, which is fortunate since I had covered 90% of it back up with 2-3 ft of dirt before it was tested. 😉
I decided to try to demonstrate just how strong the flow is but the video just doesn’t do it justice. I posted it anyway, so feel free to throw away 30 seconds of your life and watch it anyway if you are curious. (Pay no attention to the doofus stumbling around at the end.)
Next up, whenever I get time: Victorio food strainer vs the first Roma flush of the year:
Harlequin (bug) Romance?
Harlequin bugs are a variety of stink bug that can cause problems with cole crops (ex: cabbage, broccoli, collards) in warmer areas.
In my case, they have moved into an experimental patch of pak choi- experimental in that I am testing how the Joy Choi variety might fare in the hot summers here. The plants were doing fairly well and exhibited no signs of bolting after I set them out in June. But……
There was an orgy of sorts going on when I arrived and most of the colorful pests scattered as I attempted to pick them off, but these two apparently had no shame.
While their position seems void of any entomological intimacy, it is actually quite effective. The damage from this growing colony is already apparent; they suck the juices out of leaves and stems leaving behind the brown spots. If left alone eventually they will take over and this will kill the plants.
Go ahead and party up tonight you disgusting little fornicators, because tomorrow the Neem Oil comes out.
More green than brown, call it progess
My spacing was once again somewhat ambitious; the back is very tight now and will only get worse as the plants get lankier over the remainder of the season.
It seems it has gotten so crowded that my beans have escaped the confines of my border and are cascading down the other side of my fence over the alley. This is fine as long as the city doesn’t send the prison work detail out to trim the right of way like they did on occasion back when there was privet encroaching. Picking will be easier on the alley side, hopefully not so easy that someone beats me to it. On the inside, I’ll be squeezing in between the okra (btw spineless okra isn’t without spines; it really should be called spine-reduced) and the beans-on-bamboo-on-the-fence.
The mud chute from the well is finally drying up enough to start doing something about it and I’ve re-hung the two sections of fencing I took down for the well rig’s access. Things are slowly looking a little better but the evidence remains…..
“The well”…. well, it is is still pumping wide open just as much water as as a pump can move without power hooked up to it. After the pump was installed about 8 days ago, I granted Reggie, everybody’s favorite tattooed electrician, an extra week’s delay since he was backed up on another job and rain was in the forecast.
Today was to be our day for the hookup. A few minutes after I left for the office this morning, Reggie showed up with an immobilized shoulder. Apparently one of the jobs he was working on last week involved long ladders, one of which he tested gravity from (gravity still works by the way.) He took a tumble and is out of commission for at least a week, maybe two. At this rate I’ll have the well pumping just in time for the rainy season this fall.
The good news is that the 150 feet of trenching is now filled, tamped and back at grade with the yard. In the shady area near the house, the clay soil never really completely exited the “wet dirt” aka “mud” category, so I spread wheat straw over it area to minimize the muddy poodle paw prints that come with it. I went ahead and spread the straw under the porch and right up to the edge of the basement since I would be spending some time down there framing in a new wall with an access door. Actually, two access doors, one for me to more easily get in to where the pump controls and pressure tank are located, and one extra fat cat door. (I’m not kidding, I was told this one is on the way: “Fat cat cat door is an extra large cat door for chubbier cats”.)
Pictures showing evidence of all:
“Plant spacing”
From the back window:
From the back corner, with a little of the bean kudzu on the left:
From the back corner looking towards the other back corner, up the mud chute (pay no attention to the garbage can turned compost bin, it got caught in the mudslide and I haven’t been able to rescue it yet):
A re-run of the bean kudzu escaping the compound:
“The well”
The powerless well head and the “freeze proof hydrant”, freshly set into a bed of gravel with concrete added for stabilization:
“The back fence reassembled” (sort of in the background anyway).
“The smoothed ground under the pecan tree where a muddy trench once resided”
Under the porch @ the basement (including the still dry pressure tank).
The chubbier cat door’s indignant future beneficiary enjoying a stationary hay ride:
And some recent bounty:
That’s all for now…
Full Moon?
Amazing how much larger it looks with a humid haze in the air…
Too many irons in the fire
I am paying for my “simple” idea of installing a well in the backyard. The distraction has impacted production- a little neglect and procrastination come back to haunt you…
The well pump, piping and pressure tank are installed waiting for power (coming Monday or Tuesday). The trench is largely refilled but needs some attention. The well mud cache is dry enough for me to start addressing.
It is all still a huge mess though and heat indexes of 100+ for the last 10 days isn’t doing much to motivate me to clean it up. Some of the fall plantings need to be seeded NOW or really a little earlier; I’m waiting on some new varieties of broccoli, brussel sprouts and leeks from Johnny’s Select Seeds.
Jury duty this week, vacation in a couple more.
Blah blah blah
Anyway, good things are still happening.
Picture time:
A Blue Jade sweet corn snack and an odd but tasty patty-pan squash
Potatoes pulled earlier than I wanted due to discovery of rot in a couple of Yukon Golds.
Garlic and most of the shallots are prepped, sorted and ready to move to the basement er… I mean “root cellar”.
The last handful of onions that were forgotten in a corner of one of the back beds:
The side porch is now an onion curing station
“Christmas” limas have gone kudzu on the back fence:
And…. the Tomato train is rolling into the station. (no pic yet).
Kitteh is clean?
Dogs are dirt, cats are clean, right?
I’m not so sure anymore; on s lot of evenings, the 17lb Monster relaxes in the (relatively) cool red clay that is shaded by the pecan tree all day.
Don’t worry though, he doesn’t make a mess when he comes back in, he just lays on my stuff. A hat in this case:
Behind cohutt's fence 