Finally a Sunny Day

After so much rain (3" yesterday) we had a nice day today. So of course I was so busy that I forgot to take pictures. You will have to use your imagination. I harvested all the typical summer fare: tomaotes, cukes, zukes, beans, peas, jalapeños. But today I noticed how sad the lettuce was. It really hates the heat. I picked most of it that was over 2" tall. It was bolting. I left a little in, but really it isn't lasting well. Next year I have to start seeds indoors in the basement where it is cool. Then put the plants out after they have grown a bit. The lettuce I seeded about a month ago is only an inch tall. Pretty sad. But at least I'll have (slightly bitter maybe) lettuce in the fridge for a week and half. It took a while to get it into the fridge. Though there are barely any insects on the leaves anymore, they were coated in mud. So they needed a very thorough washing.

The poor little carrot seedlings were smooshed into the dirt. I gently freed their leaves from the drying mud. The second seeding (to fill in the gaps from the first seeding) is just starting to come up. I'm surprised all the seed wasn't washed away. I'll have to keep the surface moist for the next few days, because after that heavy rain, the soil will crust over if left to dry and the rest of the little seedlings will be stuck underneath.

I picked two long 16" beans from the yard long bean plants. This is certainly not enough for a meal yet. I'll have to wait for the others to get a little longer. Or cook them up with my green beans (most likely). If I do it that way I can do a taste test. My Fortex beans are the prettiest. They are very straight and long but not very productive and they are starting to get diseased. So far my Kentucky Wonder beans have been producing like crazy. They were the first (and still only) bean to make it to the top of the trellis. I would say I get about twice to three times as many beans from them as I do from Fortex.

My dill was almost on the ground because of all the wind and rain. I had to put up a trellis to keep it off the basil and leeks. While I was at it I picked a lot of later dill that was just starting to blossom and turned it into pickle juice. I had to be careful though because my second crop of butterflies is on its way. I saw two caterpillars munching on the leaves. I saw some last week too, but they never grew up. They disappeared well before they got to the pretty green and yellow striped coloring of their youth. Ah well. I have too many beneficial wasps zipping around. I really can't complain much about that.

Then it was on to the raspberries. I have ever bearers. Which means they bear fruit twice a year. Once in July and once in September. The chipmunks have finally found them and stripped off most of the unripe berries. So I cut out the old canes to let the new ones grow up for my fall crop. The new canes were thinned out to keep the air circulating, and so I can find the berries in the mass of canes. The other added benefit of thinning the canes is that it makes it easier to get into my car. They grow right up against the driveway and my car is parked on that edge. So they attack me constantly.

I also had to spray my worm tea/aspirin mix today. I would have done it at the beginning of the week, but it never stopped raining. It isn't supposed to rain again until Sunday. So it ought to give the plants time to enjoy their spray. I am seeing more disease after all this rain. I saw the first of the powdery mildew in the garden this year. Luckily it was on a dead bean leaf on the ground. I quickly disposed of it. Tomorrow I'll have to clean up any dying leaves so such things don't spread. Today everything is still a little too damp to clean up the plants.

Baby all Grown Up

Yesterday afternoon when I was out in the garden, a beautiful black swallowtail was playing around me. She would land on the parsley flowers then flitter on over to the dill flowers. Was this one of my baby caterpillars all grown up? I would like to think so. It seems about the right amount of time. Of course I did not have my camera with me, but after about 5 minutes of watching her, I ran into the house for it. The butterfly really didn't want to sit still. The only time she did before she flew away was this brief rest on my tomato plant.

Summer Has Started

Most people thought summer was on June 20th, but in my garden it is when the summer pests start to rear their ugly little heads. Yes that would be today. I saw my first Japanese beetle and first vine borer today. Japanese beetles are annoying, but are easily killed by brushing them into soapy water. At 10:30 today the first drowning occurred marking the transition to summer. I found it strange that it was also the day of the first vine borer.

Vine borers are harder to deal with. I've yet to find an effective solution. I am going to plant a late planting of zucchini and yellow squash around July 1st and keep them under row covers until the borers disappear. But what can you do about them if you don't use a row cover, like my first planting? Each borer can lay a zillion tiny little eggs. Ok they lay about a hundred or two. But all by themselves along the stem, on the leaves, I've even had them on the fruit. Everywhere. I pick them off when I see them, but you know I'm going to miss some lots. I dig them out of the stem as soon as possible, but still the plant suffers, and eventually are weakened and they succumb to mildew. Sigh. Maybe I'll row cover my pumpkins while they still have a chance.

At least the butterflies were out today. I saw a yellow swallowtail and a monarch today, along with a lot of other lesser, but pretty butterflies that I don't know the names of. I tried chasing them down with my camera, but they wouldn't let me get that close. My black swallowtail caterpillars are long gone. They each reached a particular size and disappeared. I think they are off pupating. I'm hoping. I thought they took about a month and a half to grow big enough for that, but I recently read that if it is early enough in the season they can take less than 2 weeks. So initially I was worried that they were eaten by birds, but now I think they are ok. Maybe I'll have another batch of them later. I'll have to plant more dill for them, my current dill is going to seed. Or maybe they will be happy with my parsley.

War or Peace?

I'm growing caterpillars in my garden. Usually when I see a caterpillar in the garden I go into war mode and get my favorite implement of destruction - a rock. I leave the smooshed caterpillars out for the birds to eat. But when I see caterpillars on my dill, I change tactics. I leave them. "Why" do you ask? Swallowtails love my dill. I wasn't sure that the little larvae I saw three days ago was a swallowtail larva. It looked nothing like it. It was about 1/4" long and its front and back where black and had a white ring around its middle. But I let it live, just in case.

Now in just three days he is an inch long. In the photo, the one at the top is about two days old and the one at the bottom is about three days old. And as you can see, the older one has his true colors (at least I think he won't change too much) . He looks like a black swallowtail.

Right now I have about 10 caterpillars eating my dill and more keep hatching. I'm hoping the birds don't get them. I love the swallowtails flittering around my garden. They are more than worth the price of a little dill.