On the weekends I take the highway as there is no traffic and I am there in about 15 minutes. Before leaving the house, I checked the weather and it said it was cloudy and I didn’t see any rain for the morning. While driving I could see the dark clouds and I was hoping they weren’t headed towards the Pickle Patch.
Before starting my chores, I checked the rain gauge from yesterday. Again, my phone said we were going to get .3 inches and instead we got 1.3 inches.
No sooner than I started trimming any suspicious leaves and limbs from the June tomatoes the rain started. I continued as there was no lightning or thunder and it felt actually nice as it was humid already. It started pouring and I quickly walked to the truck to wait it out.
Now my weather app reports rain and it will rain for 15–20 minutes. I decided to catch up on my emails. So in that short rain we got a 1/4 inch more.
It is hard to plan when the weather app can’t predict the weather and the weather TV reporters don’t tell you how much we will get anymore as they don’t know either. Since the budget cuts — and I could be wrong — our weather apps and reports just don’t seem to be as accurate anymore.
Is anyone else having this problem?
I went back and finished where I left off and have it in my plan tomorrow to do a preventative copper fungicide spray, as I do not want either septoria or early blight to get a foothold. I walked the garden and noticed a flower on my India cucumbers. I also noted that once the final cucumbers are to size, I will rip out and replant, as my last window for summer crops like cucumbers is August 15th. I have a little time, but I seem to still have a lot to get done.
I think for 3 gardens that are 25′ x 100′ and my Learning Plot at 25′ x 40′, I am doing okay. My goal is still to get it to be self‑sufficient — and I’m making baby steps toward that goal.
Other crops I noticed are the summer squashes and zucchini, which are infested with squash bugs. I am already just letting it play out and will replant, and actually came up with a brilliant plan of using the tomato holes that I didn’t use. Most are almost ready in RRR — and I want to try these Italian zucchini seeds that give more male flowers for cooking. My husband brought them back when he was visiting his brother — they came from his brother’s girlfriend. I remember her telling me about what you can do with the flowers, but I didn’t know there were seeds that produce more male flowers so you can harvest the blooms and still get some zucchinis too!
I gave a few seeds to Morino to try, as he has a whole patch where he collects the male blooms for his Mexican dishes. He told me he puts them in soup, stuffs them, chops them up, and uses them in other dishes I can’t remember. The other day he gave me some Mexican sweet corn and told me how to eat it. You put mayonnaise, ketchup, hot sauce, and a tri‑blend of Mexican cheeses. I told this to my husband and he gave me a face like, yuck! I am going to try it, but I don’t have the three cheeses. A couple of weeks ago I bought the Mexican crumbling cheese. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it tasted.
My last two chores were working on the soil amendment (Black Kow, compost, gypsum, kelp meal, and my dry Bocking 14 comfrey) and using my connecting trellis fencing to create my shade contraption. I’m reusing my cut‑up old lightweight landscape fabric and clothes pins. What do you think?
I hope it will help my little babies, because last week when I had the one‑two punch of heat and rain, I lost—I think—seven plants. As I am known for my plans, I have a plan and will reveal if it works soon.
During this time the heat and humidity were ramping up, and I was eating, drinking, and trying to cool off so I could complete everything I wanted to get done for the day. I quickly picked a peck of peppers—so it seemed—and a gallon bag of okra. I also picked a few yellow squash. The reason I picked the peppers is because I did some research after realizing the two collapsed plants had actually given me a full pound of jalapeños. I canned two pints and used some for my spicy pickled okra. Come to find out, the plants may have gone into stress because they were loaded with peppers.
Once I completed that chore, I needed to pop in on the Learning Plot to check on the summer squash mounds—and they are up! Yay! I guess my seeds were duds the first two times. I’m glad I used different seeds the third time — third time is the charm!
