Mud…
In case the purpose of the previously posted equipment has escaped you, I have an irrigation well/ geothermal HVAC scheme hatching behind the fence these days…
It is early, as the “spudder” or cable rig boring the 6″ hole is slow (but small enough to get into the yard without too much disruption.)
That would be 6″ wide, not deep. 😉
He’s somewhere between 50 and 55 feet deep now and has been banging though shale for the last 15-20 feet or so- a good thing. Everything above the shale was the stickiest, finest Georgia clay I have seen in some time.
It has to go somewhere- my initial retention slough was pretty much full yesterday evening so I had to get creative to contain the future spillover. By this evening I’ll know how well I did – ha.
The slough yesterday, about 1 ft deep in most places:
The now two-tone wellies after my late evening expansion of the slough:
More to follow, disaster or not….
Mockingbirds and Blueberries
One has to protect the inventory by every means possible.
“Sounds Crazy, May Work”
.
.
Pests and Pestilence
As the weather warms I am reminded of the pitfalls that come with trying to grow a lot in a small space without dousing the plot in chemicals.
First: Pests
The top 5 or 6 inches of one of my potato vines looked stressed and upon closer inspection I found a Leaf Footed Bug and a fresh hatch of nymphs. These are nasty little things, real creepy crawlies that mature very quickly and go on to suck the life out of all sorts of plants. Last year I had late season issues with these and other types of stink bugs; they left a trail of hard white spots on the late tomatoes as they sucked liquids from under the skins.
I wasn’t very forgiving; I set the tip of the vine afloat in the “Pest Hell Bell” but gave them a sporting chance to swim to safety out of the goodness of my heart. (Insert diabolical laughter here)
And now: Pestilence
One of my healthier looking Brandywine tomato plants suddenly fell ill and severely wilted.
I removed the plant and inspected the crown area to see if I could identify the cause.
Hmmmm….. the soft green outside layer of base stem was gone- it looked as if a critter of some sort had stripped the first couple of inches off.
No such luck…. the layer was likely removed by Southern Bacterial Wilt – “Pseudomonas solanacearum”.
Treatment: None
Control: Rotation
I almost stuck another tomato plant there; the results would have been identical. Oops.
A small patch of Henderson Bush Limas has now been planted in this 2×2 square…
Curing Garlic
In order for Garlic to “keep” well until next year’s harvest, it has to be cured or dried prior to storing.
I have read that part of the “full” garlic flavor comes after the harvest, from the moisture draw to the head & cloves from the leaves during the curing process. Does it really? Who knows. All I know is the heads are milder on the fresh garlic I’ve pulled this season vs the stored heads from last year.
Also, once the skin has dried a bit the chances of bruising and/or rot creeping in during storage is greatly reduced.
The best way to cure? Off the ground, in a warm place but out of the sun, in circulating air, & with the heads having little if any contact with other bulbs. If you look around your home, yard & garden you can probably find a couple of spots that meet this criteria.
This year I opted to hang most of the garlic high under the porch roof of Lizzie’s house. A couple of large clumps are hanging on my back porch (one is the hardneck harvest, the other is made up of all the heads that started splitting or separating (these will be eaten first…)
(Watch your head)
Also, the first wave of shallots need similar curing. I came to the conclusion that I needed to pull all from the two side beds due to a modest number of bulbs that were succumbing to rot. For these I used plastic shelf stocking trays that had open grid bottoms (remember air circulation). The former lawn mower shed that is coming down soon got a stay of execution and is now a shallot curing station.
(I don’t think the big bag of Perlite cares….
In a couple or 3 weeks all should be ready to trim up and store/share.
Garlic Wafting
In spite of the recent suggestion from Mr C (and his paper stomach) that I had pretty thoroughly covered garlic this year and should perhaps move on to new subject matter, I offer yet another update on the aromatic allium harvest currently wrapping up behind the fence.
It was ready, so it was pulled:
Today I’ll continue to sort, tie and then hang the clumps to cure. Honestly I was like a 4 year old harvesting carrots or radishes; after I lifted a few and discovered what was below I just couldn’t stop.
Before I caught myself I had wagons of garlic drying in the breezy shade under the pecan tree……
Bees and wasps
There is a lot going on around us all the time, we just rarely bother to notice.
For example……………….
My bumblebees are back this year; this is fortunate since last year they were the pollinator workhorses behind the fence.
On shallot flowers (note the fly? in the second pic).
I have a lot of different types of wasps patrolling the garden; they fantastic predators and are constantly working deep into the leaves to gather their dinner.
I noticed this fellow on my garden clipboard:
So what is he up to? Remember the “fly” on the shallot flower?
Mmmmm a lunch of fresh fly:
I may not have the critters properly ID’d, feel free to correct me…..
That’s it for today.
Smell this post
So as of yesterday evening, a lot of my garlic has flopped over and I have a modestly concerning shallot rot trend in one of my side beds.
Considering also that enough of the leaves on the softneck seem to be drying up and dying back, it seemed time to do a sample “lifting”. For the most part the smaller garlic plants were the ones that were farthest along so they became the sample. What this “flopped” garlic looks like before being pulled:
Results?
Pretty good considering how skinny the stalks on some of these were.
Softneck on the right, hardneck on the left, shallots on top and the one small elephant garlic head in the front left. This is probably less than 1/4 of the total in the garden this year, maybe 20% or so. It looks like we’ll have enough this year. HA
This fine tray of alliums was moved to the back to cure out fo the sun on the grill; the aroma is phenomenal given the current temps here.
My Kitteh So Tough…..
My kitteh so tough, he use a sledgehammer fo a pillow.
But you wake him up, you getting the crazy eye…….
Behind cohutt's fence 