A cloudy morning, and I thought it was going to be cooler according to the weather reporter, but instead it was so humid that sweat was running off my face just doing simple tasks like getting the large piece of black plastic out of my shed, which I decided not to use. At least the giant black plastic is now folded neatly. For now, I decided to store it under the lean-to. I might need it to cover a bed in a few days; honestly, I just didn’t feel like putting it back in the shed.
The reason I got the plastic out was to cover my two bales of straw. I decided to use one in the Learning Plot, and the other bale can stay nice and dry in my covered truck bed.
I was going to spray BT and copper fungicide but decided against it, as it may rain later, and tomorrow will be a better day.
Do you ever think you’re going to do xyz, and instead you end up doing something completely different? That’s what happened to me. I was first going to spray after seeing the tomatoes in the Learning Plot — I missed spraying copper fungicide on Monday — and I was going to spray the remaining squash and the other veggies with a preventative BT. Then I had plan B in my mind, which was to finish the cage storage and purge the ones I don’t like (give away cages to my row that could use them). Then redesign my opening for the new bed and move the poles to thirteen feet, which will fit my twenty-eight cages, and open a three-by-six bed next to the asparagus for my new dedicated dill bed. Asparagus are companion plants, and dill repels the asparagus beetle.
I also wanted to work on the holes for my new summer squash and zucchini plants in RRR. I decided against putting new ones in the current bed, as the same problem will happen again. By putting a different crop in what was a tomato hole, I am prepping Rudy to put tomatoes back in that hole next year, as this will be considered crop rotation.
I did none of this. Instead, I knew I had two things that needed to be completed immediately today — putting cardboard and straw around the mounds in the Learning Plot, and Peter Rabbit-proofing my Chinese beans.
I asked Gerald the other day, when he said he was going to some old-fashioned farm store, to see if they had straw. When I got to the gardens, two bales were at my plot. He said that since they were not tight bales, they were marked down from five dollars to two dollars. What a deal.
They were the same size as the ones I bought before, but I noticed there was a difference in weight. That’s when I found out that straw bales are light and hay bales are heavier. No wonder a couple of years ago I had a lot of weeds growing from the “straw.”
I took the bale of straw and all the cardboard I had on hand and drove to the Learning Plot to start this task. Before I laid the cardboard, I scalped any weeds that were around the cucumber and watermelon mounds. I then worked on taking any tape or staples out of the boxes and laid them as best I could around the mounds. As I get more cardboard, I still need to finish the other side of the cucumbers. I am not worried about the summer squashes, as they are caged and will be mulched with chopped leaves and pine needles. The reason I did this is because those weeds would have turned into a jungle, and now I hope it won’t be as jungly for the vining cucumbers and watermelon.
Before I started on the Peter Rabbit Project, as I usually do, I saw Morino and greeted him and his wife with a good morning. He said he was having some issues with his summer squashes, and I said let me have a look. I am no expert, but I now know what squash vine borer looks like. I didn’t see any of that going on, so maybe they just need a nutrient boost, and they are also stressed from the 100+ heat. Then he showed me a peanut plant that had been eaten, and I said either a rabbit or rats ate it. I told him to try sprinkling cayenne pepper powder. To make sure he understood what I was saying, I went and found my bottle that I bought at Sam’s. We sprinkled some on his peanut plant. He said he was a Sam’s member and plans to buy the cayenne pepper. I forgot to tell him about the fork defense. This is another good way to keep critters away. I am using it on my one and only melon that is growing bigger all the time.
I was going to do the trio defense — fork defense, cayenne pepper powder, and the garlic pepper spray — for Peter and the Chinese beans, but I didn’t have enough forks for eleven feet. Also, if it rains like they predicted, then the cayenne pepper powder sprinkled on the beans would be washed off, and the spray would get weaker and wash away.
This left me to start building “Fort Knox.” It’s a good thing I have fence posts and all the extra 1/2″ fencing for keeping the rabbits out. Funny enough, I have one that walked through my gate and loves it here. Our second year, we invested in the fence because the rabbits devoured the thirty feet of beans, leaving only the stems.
I forgot to mention that I pinned down the fence with the landscape pins I pulled out of RRR when I was opening his tomato holes. I reuse things that are still useful, don’t you? In one spot, I put my fork defense on the outside of the fence, as I thought even with the pins there might be a gap. In front of the fence is a row of basil, which rabbits don’t like the smell of, and I accidentally knocked a branch or two off the plants while working and put them by the fence too as a deterrent.
Now that I finished these two urgent tasks, I can finally get a wiggle on with the planting — Peter Rabbit isn’t the only one hopping around out here.