 I’m giving this a try- it’s just plant oil that keeps fungus spores from contacting the leaf surface (on a molecular level). Bottom leaves are turning yellowish (I need more fertilizer), and the yearly spots are developing again. Time to spray!  This mornings breakfast, sautéed with a coupla eggs tossed in for good luck.  Bag-O-greens to snack on at work and share with others.  Jalapeno pepper plant popping out organic healthy spices for breakfast  Kale, cabbage, and first tomatoes add the greens sauteed with garlic powder and olive oil  Last year's potato crop from my garden, this year's onions  Dumped together with six eggs added... was enough for me and my son to have a FREE HEALTHY breakfast. Zero waste breakfast with no carbon footprint!  I did not know that tomatoes got to be 6' tall. When loaded with fruit the wooden stakes ain't good enough so I had to reinforce them with steel stakes  Ghost pepper developing- spozed to be the hottest pepper- used for elephant repellent and riot control hand grenades in India. These are no joke, don't know how I'm going to use them yet. I'll prob end up giving them away to people who know how to use them.  I pulled up both rows with steel stakes and added more along the rows for added support  After HOURS of toil in the garden, order was restored. This is the way it is supposed to look! Next year, more room between the rows, plants farther apart!  CHEAP!!! CHEAP Chinese cheap products. I hate the fact that our country cares at all about doing business with that awful country. Everything that we buy/sell is made there. I see no quality in 99% of their products- CHEAP- no wonder their stuff is less expensive. Made by almost slave labor, some of it child labor, with few environmental control. I can drive an American made steel post into the ground with no fear that it's going to crumple under the stress like the cheap Chinese one. Add to that the abominable environmental carnage the Chinese have exacted on animal populations around the world, and it makes one thoroughly anti-Chinese.  I think but I'm not sure that these eggs are from the squash vine borer.  Rudbeckia 'Indian Summer' looking for attention next to the garden in an innocent patch of weeds  Emerald ash borer killed this ash tree, now it's going to heat my house this winter. Today I came home to an almost dead garden  Beets wilted on to the ground  Kales/cabbages on the ground  Peppers dead-looking  Favorite kale almost dead This is what happens when you get too confident and cocky. You CANT TURN YOUR BACK on the garden. Water, weeds, bugs, maintenance- all needs to be done ALL THE TIME. This issue makes me respect our migrant workers who go from state to state working for next to nothing doing the work Lazy Fat Americans look down their noses at (but would starve to death if these ‘second class’ citizens didn’t exist). It takes brains and muscles to do this work, not to mention a godly work ethic. Where would we be without them? They’re mostly extremely poor Mexicans and others. We totally take advantage of them, like they are slaves. Our cowardly president knows nothing about these great people, as he spews racial hatred in every other speech. I’m extremely agitated when I think of this issue- enough to the point where I would join an effort to get that asshole out of Washington- send him back home where he is hated also. The sooner the better!!!  An hour after watering the beets had forgiven me.  24 hours after watering, beets were back to normal. So was everything else  Loyal cat meow meow follows us everywhere we go every time we are home. Never had a cat like that before. Hotter than hell but meowX2 wants to help.  Best radish I ever bit into  I kneel in front of arugula and eat. Hand to mouth. Only half makes it into the bag. I then sometimes sit on the couch and munch out of the bag like a ruminant. No frills sometimes on hot tired days.  Hapless cherry tomato did not hide well enough from me. “I see you!” CHOMP  Cucumber-to-be looked to me like a Sesame Street character. He will soon play a leading role on my plate.  I spent an hour tying up 80' of 5' tall tomatoes using hemp twine. Cant turn your back on the garden at this time of the year.  First cucumber of the year, had it for breakfast this morning. American diet=bagels and doughnuts for breakfast... not at my house!  Freshest arugula I have ever had. When I harvest this stuff, it never makes it into the kitchen, it gets popped into my mouth. Most incredible plant in the world.  Beets. They are just so so so cool looking. next year I'm planting them next to the silver kale for an artsy design in the garden.  I had just spent a long time scooting down this row of tomatoes tying them up and pulling up the romaine lettuce in preparation for some summer seeding. row of tomatoes on the left got tied up next. If you let your tomatoes go without tying them up it turns into a giant mess.  The oasis is guarded by “Roberto,” a Peruvian Easter Island spirit. He sees everything and protects my house and family. I feed him spiritually every now and then.   Lucy- best loving dog ever!  We LOVE YOU LUCY!!!!!!  Look carefully and you will see meow meow bottom right- trying to soothe Lucy to no avail! Lucy lived for almost fifteen years- a tribute to a great life filled with love, happiness, and daily work routine at the nursery. Next to Roberto is Lucy who died four years ago. My neighbor Steve made this iron Lucy for me to mark her grave. My vet friend came and put Lucy down when I knew the time had come. We sat around her for a few hours that night after she had been “freed” and drank champagne. Stories about Lucy and other stories floated through the air as the evening darkened and the fireflies came out. Eventually I said “let’s go before she gets cold.”
I carried her up to the hole we dug that day, cradling her for the last time, not crying like I am now writing this. I placed her her in the hole facing the driveway so she could see us when Kyle and I left and returned, and as I stood up meow meow- Kyles cat- dove into the hole and meowed loudly then climbed out and disappeared into the darkness. The entire day meow meow was never farther than ten feet away from Lucy. How did he know Lucy would be no more??? After writing this I realize that I should stop writing tonight, having revisited Lucy’s passing for the first time in a long time. Veggie blog will be back tomorrow so I can tell everyone what I saw this afternoon in our place of peace. Just thought that I could mention to people that gardens can be a place for the soul as well as the stomach.  Some things we do on our property make our lives so meaningful like this herb garden hanging beautifully on the sunny side of this garden shed by the ocean at Higgins Beach Maine. I would have never thought of this idea- so creative and artsy. The parsley plant in the ground gets harvested all winter long, and "BUDDY," the friendliest dog to ever have roamed the earth likes to pee on it/near it. I guess that's one less plant to feed and water. Credit for this beautiful idea goes to Bob and Dianne, past owners of the Higgins Beach Inn- awesome couple!!!  Roundup controlling weeds in blueberry rows  40’ of white onions  Silvery-blue foliage of cabbage/kale  Cayenne pepper- main ingredient for my hot sauce is putting out already  Romaine lettuce has started to bolt. Time to pull them out and plant seeds of something else. Too hot for lettuce now.  80’ of tomato plants ~3.5’ apart now look like a 5’ tall hedge. All the plants are indistinguishable from the next.  The bully of my garden- 7’ wide, 3.5’ tall zucchini plants pumping more fruits out than I can eat/sell/give away. Incredibly healthy plants!  Brussel sprouts!  Huge partial harvest of the nicest zucchini’s I’ve ever grown. Way too many to eat! I need to find out how to either sell them or preserve them. Interested in buying my produce? Contact me. This is not why I have this garden.  Birds had already been screaming in June ecstasy for two hours when I took this picture yesterday. “Hugest” zucchini plants I’ve ever seen- only six weeks old!  Plum tomatoes in commercial scale abundance ready for popping into my mouth fresh or salsa, tacos, sauces!  Over eighty degrees at six am on 7/1  ANY plant parts missing on ANY cucurbit plants indicates presence of squash vine borer adults energizing to destroy cucumbers, squash,zucchini. I got there first though, and if they eat my stuff they DIE! Last year by the middle of July all my cucurbits wilted and turned into slime. Not this year though!  Classic tomato disease- happens every year. I’m going to spray for it when it’s not hot.  10,000 feet of blueberries. Had to redo this field because I did it wrong the first time. Next year it will be worth covering. Dry, wrong pH. Hope problem is solved.  Looked like lettuce was bolting in the heat so I cut off the plants, gave them away and ate as much as I could. Space is ready for seeding something else in that row.  Heads of lettuce after the slaughter.     I got rhubarb to plant/sell at the nursery. I need to find more perennial plants for the garden. Only a “couplea” things you can do with rhubarb. |
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