#pests

Slugs and grass

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January 28th, 2016, around sunset

Tonight I went out to collect slugs to experiment with dehydrating them with oyster shell lime. I knocked/picked as many as I could off of the greens (everything except dino and what I believe is curly kale is pretty much finished (flowering) and should be pulled out 😦 ). I think I had too many for the size of the container and the amount of lime. I should have added the lime in layers as I added more slugs. I dumped them into a hole that some wildlife had dug, and when I walked past later, there were a number of slugs crawling through the nearby grass. The project was probably also a failure due to the fact that it started sprinkling, and then raining lightly, while I was out there!

I forgot that the other day I hadn’t really weeded the west row of the Chandler strawberries, and started pulling the grass back on the east side. DOH! That other part of the bed is going to be a mess – already I’ve pulled off a lot of blossoms (keep growing, plants!!) and some leaves that were rotting on the wet soil. It is supposed to rain for the foreseeable future 😦

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I seriously can only get this much weeding done

I definitely should not have had the mower on its highest setting the other day, as I pretty much need to mow again!! When one is out in the field, one can see the difference in where I mowed, though.

Lastly, I turned the compost and thought about ducks and/or weeder geese and how it would be cool to have them eating the slugs and pulling the unwanted grasses.

Most of the time I was out there, I was berating myself for having swept the house instead of gardening yesterday when my inlaws were over. I really did need to do some cleaning and organizing, and having done those things made me feel a lot better about the day.

 

 

 

Rain prep

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I think I spent about 4 hours in the garden today! I weeded the strawberries while Z and T ran some errands late this morning and early this afternoon. In the evening, I weeded those Chandlers some more and then put compost under the plants. (Sadly there are plenty of weeds still in the bed). I noticed that a lot of plants that had frost damage had exposed roots, and some didn’t seem to like having their leaves touch blades of grass.

Then I made sure to shift the compost that I started earlier this week (2nd shifting). I put a whole bale of straw out on the path down the middle of the garden and alongside/in the bed of summer strawberries. I’m starting to experiment a bit with using palm fronds as path mulch. I didn’t cut the fronds up at all, so we’ll see if they break down, get slippery, or work well to cover the ground. I put a bit of straw alongside the east greens.

Speaking of the greens, I noticed that the biggest leaf on my chard plant was wilting yesterday and tried tugging on the plant- yep, it had been chewed clean off of the roots. I harvested those leaves and put the plant back into the ground (I should probably try a different spot, though, huh?). There’s a plant that I threw out of the compost pile a ways back that seems to have rooted. We’ll have to keep an eye on that one! So out of 8 plants that looked so healthy and delicious months ago, I now have 0 plants in the garden.

Pest/IPM report: There was some strange poop near the strawberries. I’m assuming it was from a fox. There’s lots of digging from the raccoons everywhere. It’s so awful. I missed one cucumber beetle today and killed one other. There are plenty of slugs around if you’re out after dark and look hard enough. The plants are growing slowly — it’s been around and below freezing most nights recently.

I was hoping to do some mowing since the grass alongside some of the beds is getting to be annoyingly tall, but it’s just too wet. I think there is a sweet spot around 2 or 3pm some days when it’s sort of dry enough, but that’s naptime.

I’m not happy about the cracked soil that’s down below. Need to keep it covered, preferably with live plants.20160102_123439.jpg

We planted some cover crops!!

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Well, I still haven’t planted a whole bed of fava beans (there are some growing with our greens). I pulled out some cover crop and grain seeds today. T was excited about the wheat seed, so we planted that in the nicely tilled bed that I was going to put favas in (and hurt my knee trying to hoe yesterday). The things we do to avoid huge tantrums (successfully).

I also planted Territorial’s “Wintermax” which should have been planted in September. It has tillage radish (I really want to grow that!), hairy vetch (iirc we grew purple vetch last year), and rye. I put this in 4 beds, plus maybe the end of the wheat bed. I added bell beans (some were beans that we grew, and some were from the 50 pound bag of bell bean seed that we bought. I put those seeds in the 4 (or 6, depending how you look at it) west-most beds. They need a lot of work, so hopefully some of these seeds will grow. It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow night.

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(not sure why Z raked the end of the south beds- maybe to pull out all the excess grass and dirt.)

I would have gotten a lot more done (maybe), but an old friend who is visiting from out of town came by for a visit with her 3 kids and hubby. It was awesome to watch the kids explore the garden together. They picked strawberries (wow, there were some to pick! i hadn’t picked in something like a week) – there were actually some undamaged big Albions. They hung out on the pile of compost. The little girl covered up some of the seeds that were on the surface (we didn’t get around to raking them in). It was so sweet. Then we came inside and they played with what seemed like every one of his toys. It was so much fun!

Z’s family comes to town tomorrow. We’ll have some kids who are currently sick staying with us, so I should really head towards bed…

I read today that nasturtiums can help repel cucumber beetles. I’ve tended to avoid them because in my experience they harbor slugs. Something to research- maybe they can grow on a fence at the edge of the garden.

 

 

 

The raccoons have gotten so big!

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Raccoons hard at work
Digging up my pea bed! You can click on the image to make it bigger M2E1L0-11R350B300

My pea bed (on the south side of the garden; the tractor reflector is pretty bright here) looks like such a mess. I have to rebury seeds/seedlings every day. I’m a bit worried about the 2 sixpacks of plants that I transplanted today, on the far north east side. The collards are too leggy, and the kales look like they needed nutrients from the soil about 2 weeks ago. Noone had thinned the cells, so I had about 10 of each kind of plant. I really don’t know where all of my seedlings will end up. We needed to do so much work this weekend, and it didn’t happen 😦

I did pick 2 baskets of strawberries today. It’s amazing that they are still producing so well. The pests are just awful, though. I’m getting better at squishing cucumber beetles as soon as I spot them – they will fly away very quickly if I wait at all!

I mowed! And stuff

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I was only out in the garden for about an hour and 20 minutes while my kid was at school, but it was a productive morning. I reburied the peas and the greens (the ones I could rebury), pulled out the drip tape from the bed I was going to mow, moved the sprinklers from the strawberry/garlic area, and mowed some other spots. This evening I got out there and weeded a bit more, hoed a bit, and located a file that T had dropped (at one point he had lost 2 – in the garden!). I also picked 3/4 of a basket of strawberries, and a bunch of cherry tomatoes and some dried Scarlet Runner Beans.

(Click on an image to see a bigger version)

Area next to the eastmost greens after mowing and raking
Mowed Next to Greens
Mowed path next to the pea bed
I mowed the path to the east of the peas
Plant that was chewed off about 5 inches above the ground
Gopher damage?

Started some bed prep

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Today I started prepping one of the former summer cover crop beds, the one that is just west of the beans. I guess that it will be where I plant either the strawberries, or the garlic. It would be faster to do it by tractor, but then I’d get less exercise! There was a dip in the bed that I was able to fill in a bit using soil that had been left in a pile after one of us had used the landscape rake on a neighboring bed.

I kept trying to assess whether or not to put the seedlings that I bought into the 2nd east bed, which is currently weeds and bell beans, or not. I think I’m going to mow that bed and then hoe out plants in order to put in the greens seedlings that I bought on Sunday. I did some more weeding in the eastmost greens today. What a mess. No sign of the caterpillar (cabbage looper?) that I saw yesterday.

caterpillar on red cabbage
caterpillar on red cabbage

It’s amazing how I would never pay for greens that look like this, but I’m so proud to eat these ones!
Chard

The raccoons have been digging again. I think I lost one greens plant in the last few days, and countless peas and pea sprouts have been dug up 😦 The camera is back up tonight. The other night Z happened to spot a raccoon climb in and out on the “H” next to the gate.

Oh, I’m thinking of planting bell beans in the last 10 or so feet of the pea row, since I don’t seem to be planting any more peas (it’s past the last recommended date for my area).

One-handed gardening

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I thought I’d chipped a bone in a finger on Thursday night, but by Friday afternoon it became clear that my wrist got sprained when I recoiled from the thing that hit my finger (just a bruise, no break). I’ve had to take it a bit easier this weekend.

Last night I picked 2 baskets of strawberries, and I picked another this morning. I also did some weeding in the greens, as usual. Then, since I had some time to myself while T and Z were at the park, I organized my seeds a bit- I had 2 boxes that hadn’t been added to my seed storage. I picked out seeds I’d like to get planted asap (peas, carrot, radish).

20150926_somefallseedstoplantSeeds in container

This evening I planted 2 10-foot rows of shelling peas!!! T took the bucket from me, dumped out the peas, and put a bunch of dirt and gravel in so he could make “soup.” Took me about 2 hours to weed and plant those peas :/. Need to get better at using the seeder tool we have.

Z mowed the old cover crops, unleashing several clouds of dust as he ran over mounds of soil that had been  left by the gophers. He also picked a bucket of ears of corn. The kernels ranged from still-whitish yellow to purplish. There is a ton of corn earworm damage! Half of many ears have been eaten. The corn will still be yummy, though!

Wind erosion
Wind erosion

And I learned how to add tags to posts here 🙂

Not the most productive day- strawberry crowns needed!

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Today I didn’t get out to the garden until 6:00. The new greens seemed to be pretty much ok after the raccoon family’s visit – there were small digging marks near some plants, but mostly on the other side of the drip tape from where I’d put the seedlings last night.

I picked strawberries, pulled out dead leaves, and killed tons of slugs and about 3 cucumber beetles.  I got less than a basket from 3/4 of our berry planting :(. The end of the season is coming quickly. We’d get a lot if we picked every three days and there weren’t so many bad ones! I usually throw the really bad ones on the ground and pick them up afterwards so they’re not just sitting out there like free food for rodents, but I didn’t get time to do that. T and Z returned with takeout right at sunset.

I picked green beans from our 2nd to last pole bean planting. We missed a bunch earlier in the week that are now really big.

I’m trying to find strawberry crowns that I can plant this month. People always recommend Chandler as a Junebearing variety. I’m having some trouble finding it (some do say to plant it in August, maybe that’s why?). A lot of places have early-season varieties that are good for planting zones 5-8, but we are “9b.” Sunset calls us zone 14, iirc, so I get really confused and can never remember our zone. But like, could I get away with planting a really early variety? Maybe if I can get just 25 of them, I could try. I got ahold of a commercial nursery that said to call back in 2 weeks, and they recommended just one of their varieties for our zone. They sell in lots of 1500 so I’d have to find some folks to go in on them with me… Last year I tried to get in on 2 different orders and none of them came thru for me (“we got shorted on our order”). So we’ll see!