A Lot Can Happen In Three Days

The discouragement is setting in, my friends. We left town this weekend to run sound for a local convention in downtown Atlanta. The same nasty line of storms that EG mentioned in his blog (http://engineeredgarden.blogspot.com/) came our way Friday night and tornado warning after tornado warning was listed for not only our county, but our individual town. I was worried enough leaving everything for three days, envisioning a monster bug attack, and now I worried about the condition of the house because of the storms. My fantastic sister-in-law agreed to take a run by the house in the morning and reported all was fine. Apparently, the radar was showing there could be a tornado on the ground, but I do not believe any was ever sighted.

However, I did return to find the yellowing of the tomatos and radishes in the far box is getting worse. I suppose the rain was too much for them being that they were already suffering from too much water and it's supposed to rain a bunch again tonight through tomorrow. I may just be replanting that bed.

The peppers in back are very yellow as well, but the ones in front in pots are thriving and putting out flowers which should open in the next week or so which has me excited.

I had planted pole beans in planters hanging from my deck a few weeks ago in hopes that the vines would run up and around my deck railing, but when I went to dig out some seeds to see why they hadn't sprouted, I found my nemesis the root maggot had destroyed all of those seedlings.

The eggplants and ssnap peas in front look a little worse for wear because of the high winds on Friday night. The peas all broke from their trellis and are sprawling. I'm going to see what I can do to prop them back up until they grab on again.

Then, as if it couldn't get worse, I noticed one of my potted tomatoes was completely severed at the main stem and there was no debris field for which to use for following the culprit. I went inside with the intent of giving our tomato-killing great dane a piece of my mind when I remembered we kenneled him three days ago. There's another stone-cold tomato murderer amongst us.

Needless to say, I'm irritated with it all.

I put some more bean seeds for my pots in wet towels and zippy bags to try to presprout them. I also did some for my big box. There's nothing in there now, so I don't need to wait for anything to be done before I plant the box. I might just plant the beans section of that box as soon as those sprout in the towels. I'll then dump an entire bag of DE on it to stop the flies from laying those blasted root maggot eggs.

I'm also going to do what I can to get my squash and zuchini in the ground as soon as possible. I heard on Walter Reeves' garden program today that the squash bug comes out in June, so try to get as much squash and zuchini as you can before that. He also mentioned to do carrots only in the fall and not spring. I wonder if that's why all of my carrots don't seem to be growing much at all?

Tomorrow I'm going to try to string the grid on the big bed. Instead of stapeling it down this time (it always pulls out), I'm going to try just putting in nails and winding the string around as I lay it and then bending the nails down around it. We'll see if that will work.