Scissor off the Swiss chard leaves, yank the one tomato, shred all and put into butter sizzling with garlic for a few moments, and dinner is served. Free. No trip to store on way home last night. No poopie fingers on my food. No washing before cooking. No chemicals. No carbon footprint other than my huffing and puffing bending over to harvest them. Growing your own food!

Last night felt pretty damn good, breaking the stop and shop habit with food from the garden. Now I wonder how often that patch of ground can provide my meals?

ps-The grass clippings really really help. Everywhere I had them the soil was still moist underneath. In places where they had blown off or were thin, the soil was bone dry. Bone dry soil=dead soil. Dead soil=dead plants.

A customer today told me his father uses Tabasco sauce as an insecticide on his garden plants-swears by it. I had never heard of it before so I looked it up and this is what I found.

Here is the link:

​http://homeguides.sfgate.com/tabasco-insecticide-83416.html

This insect will ruin your plants. At first sign remove affected leaf and toss far away. PAC man-like worm tunnels between leaf surfaces and ruins whole plant then drops into soil to pupate for many generations during the year. No chemical control, just daily checking and removal (or else!).

I walked through the veggie garden tonight just before dark and ate leaves and checked on stuff. Looks like everything is in order. Cabbage leaves tasted like candy. Swiss chard like lettuce. Hot peppers getting hot. Plants growing back after the DAMN DEER stripped them. Can't wait till tomatoes are ready. Won't be long!

Not the first time I've worked in the rain. Posts lined up matching and netting temporarily up for the night, shoulda done this first before anything else.

I did not know I was doing all this work for the GD deer. I was going to fence it in when I "felt like it" but the deer felt like eating the ballistic foliage before I felt like fencing it in!!! It's war. Between the weeping elm they ate, my hydrangeas, deer ticks, Lyme disease, now my tomatoes, I have absolutely zero sympathy for them or any other herbivore that wants to have his way with my efforts. Now I am feeling kinship with western cattle ranchers who shoot wolves. Not that I would ever shoot a wolf, but if one puts great effort into something and something else comes along and destroys that effort, ITS WAR!!!!!