Bad News in the Garden

The first bad news was about my cabbages. I had to harvest these because of my vacation timing this year. I think they could have used more time. I had one head that was a good size, but all the others were tiny. So sad. I pulled them all out along with the turnips that were in this bed. I also had some Brussels sprouts but the seedlings just didn't do anything. I knew they would never produce so they got pulled too.

I was supposed to plant another succession of my beloved Tigers Eye bean (bush dried bean) in this vacated space. They mature fairly quickly for a dried bean so I thought they had plenty of time. I went inside to get the seed and couldn't find it. I looked everywhere. Sadly I think I'm going to have to plant something else. I've got some Jacob's Cattle beans left over from last year. I might have to plant those.

And speaking of my Tigers Eye beans, the first planting was doing so well. But we had a long stretch of rain. I went out to weed them this morning and found out that rust was getting a foothold in the plants. I get rust here often closer to fall, but this is way too early. If it spreads to my other two bean beds (or the new one I haven't planted yet), I will lose a lot of beans. So instead of weeding I went in and clipped off all the leaves I could find that showed rust (I'm sure I missed a lot). These were not composted, but trashed. The poor things looked so sad afterwards.

Then to give them a chance I sprayed them with some fish emulsion. In fact since I had the sprayer out I sprayed all the beans, my fruit trees, and my roses, melons, and sweet potatoes. As I was spraying my fruit trees I noticed a couple of trees and my plum tree in particular had some really nasty aphid infections. They looked pretty sad. The plum tree's leaves were all yellowing. Luckily most of the trees were fine. So after the others were sprayed, I added some insecticidal soap to the fish emulsion and sprayed with that.

But that wasn't all the bad news to be found. I had seeded my cucumbers twice. The first time I only got three plants where I wanted about 8-12 of them. So I had seeded again. Only one seed had come up of all of them. They are all being eaten down from something, probably sow bugs or earwigs. Though after all that rain it might even be slugs. The spring was so dry we just haven't had all that many slugs. But the are starting to reproduce now.

I was out of the Cross Country seed. So I seeded yet again with the Calypso. It means I won't be able to save seed (though the first two on one side of the bed might flower first and I could save from those if I pay enough attention at the right time). I just hope this seed comes up. I put three seeds at each spot I want a plant. I do have a few left if I have to seed yet again. But I hope the third time is the charm. I used to always do starts inside for just this reason. But I hadn't had much trouble at this house getting cucumbers to come up so I had been direct seeding. I might have to go back to the old way. Too bad. It is so much easier to direct seed.

In good news the rhubarb had to be beat back again. I made some rhubarb cookies. I liked the cookie OK, but I thought the cream cheese frosting was pretty mediocre. And today I'm making a big batch of strawberry rhubarb jam.

The snap peas are also coming in well and I've been picking. I've tried freezing them in the past and haven't been successful. So I'm trying it yet again, but I'm blanching it in small batches which can cool down faster. I really hope it works. I've frozen four cups and have one test pea that I'll defrost tomorrow. If the pea is decent I'll freeze more. If not, well the frozen peas are still good in soups, but not much else.