A beautiful day today, but I have to batten down anything that might fly away with Hurricane Isaias coming. The report is that we could get 1–3 inches of rain and windy conditions up to 40 mph. I have a lot of boxes stacked in the Pickle Patch for future blueberry and Back 40 weed suppression, and being stacked, they could easily blow into someone else’s plot. I went around with my extra‑heavy metal stakes and my wooden water bars to anchor everything. I also cut down the tomatoes, put some cages in the storage holder, and laid the rest across the boxes so they wouldn’t blow away.
Yesterday morning I got a text alert that one of the board members had to turn off the water because of a leak. It wasn’t fixed until the afternoon when I wasn’t there. Since I knew about it, I brought seven milk jugs I keep in the garage for emergencies and watered the trellis beds I planted on Wednesday. All the cover crops I seeded on Sunday and Monday had some germination happening, though not as strong as my first batch of plots. Once the water came back on, I watered everything, and the sprinklers saved me a lot of time.
While the sprinklers were running, I hand‑watered with the retractable hose and then moved on to my main task — getting Rudy’s Radish Ranch holes ready for the Peter Rabbit Snackems cover crop and the regular cover crop. I pulled out all the struggling tomatoes and left the one that still had small fruit. I’ll plant seeds around it. The rest of the area had squash plants that I hope will produce in a couple of weeks. They have blooms, but they’re scrawny. I plan to give them some fish food on Sunday. I think part of the problem is that I had a thick layer of pine needles and chopped leaves. That was fine during the heat dome, but now that it’s cooler, they need more open soil.
You can see in the photos how I pulled back the landscape fabric last year to open up a bigger hole. Would you believe Rudy’s original hole was only four inches? There were at least four layers, each covered with soil. I’m not sure he knew where it was safe to plant with that many layers.
Yesterday I found another black widow, and this time I was wearing gloves and took a video.
I also saw a beautiful butterfly that I looked up — a Gulf Fritillary. I asked Google if it was a “good” butterfly, and it is: a very good pollinator.
I harvested okra, zucchini, and yellow squash. Soon I’ll be harvesting the Blue Lake pole beans — they have cute little beans all over the vines.
With rain expected early tomorrow, I’ll take a much‑needed break and work on things at home. Cooler weather is coming, and I think it’s time for Shaggy Bread and soup. I may share the recipe soon — and by Sunday I should be able to plant the RRR holes.