Future insights?

It is July... in fact, a week into July for that matter.  This is when I see people posting pictures of things they are harvesting and other gardens and I feel, well, like I'm way behind.  I know, I know, that's not how all this works, but I still feel like I'm just not getting it.

Then, after a day of couch dwelling after Fay ripped just west of us, I went down to do a quick water before getting on to the errand run.  I was greeted by a beautiful little flower on the Blue Adirondacks. 

It's so pretty and so delicate and reminding me, "It's OK.  Be patient."

The purple tinge of the leaves and the rich greens make me smile every time I see them, now I have these little flowers to look forward to when I go down and suddenly I'm not as worried that I only have male flowers on the summer squash and zucchini plants or that my squash keeps having to face all sorts of challenges this year.

But the truly exciting moment beyond that was the formation of my first tomato.

I planted my tomato seeds on March 1 and tended and watched over them for months.  They struggled when I first put them in the ground because we got hit with an unexpected, and quite unusual, heatwave.  I didn't think my tomatoes were going to make it at all.  But the Solar Flares and Yellow Pears fought back against the odds and this morning I spied the beginning formation of a Solar Flare tomato! 

Then I heard the whisper, "Patience, patience, patience."  A virtue, to be honest, I seem not to be entirely blessed.  Persistence and stubborn determination, absolutely, but patience not so much.

Another thing is that, as I study my SFG materials, I need to demonstrate the grids on my boxes.  As someone who started out as a mechanical artist, I'm more of an eyeball and, when necessary, just draw lines in the dirt kind of girl.  Grids are OK, but I don't like their aesthetic and I have my planting square to help me with spacing.

But I need to show my grids if I want to pass my class.

I looked to my tomato box for ideas.  I need to cage my tomatoes as they are really starting to do what tomatoes are supposed to do - grow.  I built a prototype cage for myself out of PVC - and I do love PVC - and started thinking: can I adapt this to make my "grid" for my class?
Hmm...

So I did some calculations in my journal and I think I can adapt this in a way that I can build higher if I need to per the individual plant and still show my grid.  I feel like I should imbed a meme of Groo saying, "Lightbulb." Now I have a plan, so when the weather cools a bit today, I'll start on that down in the garden.

My mini eggplants are really starting to grow.  There is something so pretty about a little eggplant just hanging out and growing.  I wish I had some full-sized black beauty eggplants this year, but the heat killed them off with my peppers early in the season, so this is from Agway and all they had left were the minis at that point.

The summer squash and zucchini are flowering, but as I said earlier, it looks there are only male flowers which, while are a lovely bite when breaded and fried up, doesn't give me fruit.  They're still little, so I am hopeful that I will get some summer squash of some type this year.

As I said, the squash has been through so much between the chipmunks and vine borers.  (The DE seems to be helping that situation and I saw one of my butternuts put forth another set of leaves, so fingers are crossed as tight as I can get them.) 

I am seeing lots of crickets and ants this year.  I know snakey is taking care of the crickets for me and I'll have to put out a borax trap for the ants.  I know they're pollinators, but they are bitey ants and they are EVERYWHERE!  So yeah, a borax trap to knock them down to a reasonable population is probably a good thing.

I'm trying to keep the words from today's Old Farmer's Almanac in mind: "The zucchini crop for which you had big baking plans may never come to pass.  Despite everyone's best intentions (not just yours, but theirs, too, no doubt!), annuals sometimes droop and die off before the season has barely started.  Perfection is impossible, but there are no failures - just insights to guide you into the future."

Here's to those insights... and maybe, if it's not too greedy of me, some zucchini too?

Weeding again..

You may recall that Sunday I was concerned about fencing.  I originally wanted to work with what I had, but it was clear that the existing fencing wasn't going to work.  So what's a girl to do?

She goes to the local unnamed hardware big box hardware store of doom to pick up what she needs... right?  Well, apparently the UNBBHSOD was out of fencing.  Seriously, they are out of fencing.  They had one roll that was the wrong height and 1 roll of deer netting left.  No landscaping cloth of any kind, no fencing, no hose sprayers, practically no hoses... well, no lots of things!  One of the guys who ripped some wood for me to build up my potato boxes said that between people doing "projects" (yes, he used air quotes) and factories shut down during the pandemic, they are running out of all sorts of things like lumber, fencing, piping, you name it.  If there's a home project or DIY thing, people are running in to pick up odd things.

It's funny, I had noticed the lumber was lower than usual inventory, but it hadn't really registered with me until he said that.  I was happy they had a 2x4x8 to rip into 2' pieces so I could raise the boxes from 12" to 16" because, as I said to my potatoes, I'm greedy for potatoes this year.

So with no fencing available (yet), I turned to another round of weeding the ever invasive mugwort, mint, and who knows what else is growing.  Sunday I was just dejected at how a couple of good rainstorms, that we absolutely needed, could bring everything back so quickly. The only way to fix it was to take my shovel, turn over the ground, and pull more and more roots from the loosened soil.

I won't lie, it's hard work, but the place feels like there is breathing space again.  Of course, I also unearthed a colony of mini ants, so I'll have to set some borax traps to get rid of them.  I also discovered the shell of a squash vine borer, so this afternoon will be looking up how to get rid of those jerks.  My poor squash crop has suffered enough!

The other necessity for the day was building a couple of support cages for the eggplant.  See, this is the beauty of PVC, I have all the pieces already.

Of course, startling "Snaky," the little garter snake that hangs out protecting my garden from frogs and things, did elicit a bit of a scream with an apology.

It's a little boring to have to line up and organize all the cut pieces to find what I needed, but before long, the eggplants have been caged.  The big payoff was discovering a baby eggplant growing!

That brought a squee of excitement!

I am excited about eggplant and the squash is beginning to flower. As I build and start to trellis them, I will examine them to see they are male and female flowers to ensure pollination for fruit, but for now, seeing flowers after all the strife my poor squash have been through this year is a good sign.

As I hauled another wagon full of weeds to the scrub pile today, I did write a poem in my head:

Red Wagon

I measure my work by the wagon load

digging and filling each load,

hauling the unwanted survivors 

to another part of 

the world

where the unwanted 

seems to reside

with the help of

a rusty, red wagon.

Digging holes

Before I started

After weeks of looking, I finally found a post hole digger.  For those of you unfamiliar with this tool, it's essentially a couple of mini trenching shovels on a scissors-like pair of poles.  You shove it into the ground, pull it closed, and then pull up the captured dirt.  After you get down a certain distance, you stick in your fence pole and then fill it back up.  For more permanent fencing, you might mix up a batch of cement to pour in the hole to really secure things.

Starting to add posts

If I wanted to be that jerk, I would do that, but ...  community garden and all that.  Now the problem with my plot is that the fencing is really piecemeal.  Wooden poles, fencing poles, sticks - you name it.  Some of the fencing itself is welded wire, other is nylon, some is garden center special edging, all of it is a mess.  So I have to think through things, such as how much do I put up an effective, uniform fence in all this?  I'm thinking the real way to do this isn't happening this year.  I would want to dig a foot deep trench all around the garden, place a bottom bar on which to set my PVC into with the fencing strapped to that bottom bar, then fill the trench and make sure the fencing reaches at least 4' above the ground to stop burrowing animals, like the "fat beavers" (aka groundhogs aka woodchucks) from digging under the fence but be high enough to be a pain in the tuchis for the deer to jump.

View from the top of the plot

After two hours of setting poles, and just attaching the current mess with zip ties to keep it out of the way of folks getting to their plots (and making it clear my plot is still not a walk in all you can eat buffet)  until I pick up a roll of fencing.  Who knows, maybe I'll get a bit crazy and dig the trench still. 

I also spent some time digging up the pernicious weeds that never want to leave my plot.  Just like the wild things, they love it so.  I am being like Max and saying, "No."

Of course yesterday I made the grand mistake of visiting the vegetable garden at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens.  If you have never been there, it is a wonderful place full of interesting plants and gardens and things.  Currently, there are fairy houses scattered throughout the gardens.  They are truly delightful, but the vegetable garden made me sad.  It is so far along compared to mine.  The cubanelle peppers are producing fruit, there are tomatoes and it looks green and lush and perfect.  I keep trying to tell myself my garden is right where it's supposed to be, but sometimes it's hard not to compare.

egg plant flower

radishes :) 

I mean, I grew those tomatoes from seed and they are looking healthy and growing, my beans are climbing up the teepee poles and those potatoes!  I started the third set of potatoes "downtown" so they'll be ready for a slightly later harvest into the fall rather than at the end of the summer.  The corn is "knee-high by the fourth of July."  My eggplants are starting to flower.  Sure, I bought those from the local farm, but they are happy and thriving.  My radishes, which I planted from seed a few weeks ago are popping up like, "Hi, we're here and almost ready to go!"

My lettuce failed, so I'll try a different kind this week.  The carrots are really thriving.  I may plant some more to come up when I start pulling potatoes.  Tomorrow my trellis netting should be coming in so I'll start building my trellises for the squash.  I'm going to try to build an arch for the zucchini and summer squash and I'll build my PVC trellis for the full squash box.  Three of the six seeds I planted are starting to sprout.  My one cucumber and pumpkin that survived the chipmunk attack are needing the support.

The tomato trellis is next up.  Since it's the whole box, I think it will be a number of trellised walls, we'll see.

Tomorrow morning, I'll dig some more holes and get some more fence posts in, clear out some more weeds that are creeping into the overall plot.