watering and beetle schedule

now that we have traps to empty, it seems like the person in charge of watering should also do the emptying. i'd definitely recommend getting someone else to go out there to help, if only for moral support.

15-TG
17-MG
19-DF
21-TG
23-DF
25-AW
27-AW
29-TG
31-MG

there was some logic to this schedule but now that it's just the last part, i'm not sure how much sense it makes anymore. please be assured that everyone was on the original watering schedule 3 or 4 times. except for jenny, who was on 5. i guess we should work something up for August so if people want to email me with times they're away, i can figure it out.
of course, we also need to have a beetle summit about the other bugs that are out there. ugh.

Traumatized by beetlemania

I went to 5 stores today to look for beetle traps. Good ol Farm and Fleet finally hooked us up. I bought two and I also bought some organic pesticide at Lowes just in case I couldn't find any traps, so I can return it if we don't use it.

I felt like I was in a horror movie when I attempted to set up the 2 traps in the garden. Hundreds of beetles flew from everywhere and landed on my face and hair and hands even after I set the traps down because I still had the scent of the trap lure on me. It was scary.

The good news is that there are beets and broccoli that are ready to be picked, and I picked two green peppers today too. More peppers are going to be ready soon. I could only find one zucchini in the jungle that is the squash plants though.

Beetlemania pt 2

Now the beetles are eating the pea plants.

Beetlemania

Melissa and I checked out the beetle situation today. It looks like they are mostly eating those huge weeds, but they are also eating the tomato plants and the basil. The milk jug trick didn't kill anything, so we went to Home Depot to see if they had any organic pesticides that would kill beetles (Strawberry Fields didn't have anything). They had one brand that said "made by vegetables for vegetables" but melissa and i couldn't figure out what one of the ingredients actually was (and now I forget what it was) so we didn't buy it. Maybe Melissa will remember the brand so we can look up that ingredient.

Bottom line is that we need to do something about the beetles on the tomato plants--in one section of the garden, it's relatively bad. I have some issues with touching bugs, so if everyone else decides to do the potential plan of picking beetles off plants and drowning them, I don't think I can help with that. If you want to wait until Donovan gets back and he sees what's up, that is ok. Melissa and I are ok with organic herbicide (if indeed we can figure out what the mystery ingredient is in the kind we saw today). She and I are also ok with using the other stuff our garden neighbor recommended. Let us know what you want to do.

P.S. Donovan, I picked a bunch of pickling cucumbers for you, so they will be in my fridge til you get back

Snake

In addition to the beetles, we also have a black snake living around our garden plots. I take this to be a good sign--our garden is so beautiful, all of the creatures want to live there. Apparently, this snake has been around for a couple of years--it's a familiar friend to some of the other gardners--and it is totally harmless. It's also very small. But, if anyone is afraid of snakes, do be careful. Thrash around a bit before entering any high weeds, for example.

Weeding Tip

Our experienced garden neighbor (the nice one, not the mean one) passed along a little weeding advice to me yesterday. She says that when the weeds get this out of control (and trust me, they're totally out of control) you should pull them, but leave them in the garden. She says you should then take the piles of weeds and throw them over the other weeds. Supposedly they will suffocate the other weeds, thus reducing the amount to be weeded. I thought the advice was worth a try--especially since it means I don't have to carry piles of weeds over to the dumping ground.

If you notice weeds piled in the garden, this is why.

Exciting News!

I went to the garden tonight and pulled weeds all around 7/9 pepper plants and watered. I didn't put more straw down around the pepper plants because it was impeding the weeding process and there is much more to weed over there next to the tomato plants.

The exciting news is that a big cucumber AND a big zucchini were ready to be picked today, as well as tons of the peas. Also I gave Sascha lettuce and in exchange for the gift, he said that he would help me pick vegetables that were ready next week.

There are weeds everywhere though and it's driving me bonkers! Maybe I can get Sascha to weed too in exchange for all of the lettuce we can't eat.