Garden Insects

I considered myself lucky until this point for having only seen one SVB moth with little consequence. Today I chased one through the garden for a full 45 minutes if not more. Those suckers aren't like Japanese or click beetles. You come up on one of those, whisper, "Boo," and they freeze like an opossum in the headlights and fall into your cup of soapy water. These SVB moths are more like armadillo. You think they look complacent, but those suckers are fast and squirrely. I couldn't catch him to save my life, even with Benny Hill music playing in the background. I don't know what my goal was. I'd never catch him, but then I'd never tire him out or irritate him enough to leave, either. I suppose all I can do is deal with the aftermath, but those bushes are so huge that I can't get myself in there completely to look for those eggs. I'll keep hunting them, but I suppose it will be what it will be.

I couldn't get him to sit still, but I did manage to get some other pictures of insects in the garden.

This guy here looked scary, so I left him alone.

Here's one of the ladybug looking like creatures in the garden. I can't tell the difference yet between those that are good and those that look like ladybugs and are really bad. Anyone have any good instructions?

Here's another of those. Sorry about the bad focus. This one looked to be struggling with small white things all on its sides, underbelly and mouth. This little guy looked like a ladybug but was solid black with two red dots on either side.

Here's a spotted cucumber beetle right before he met his untimely end in my cup of soapy water.

Can anyone identify these eggs? I have a huge Japanese beetle issue, and I figured they were Japanese beetle eggs, but don't they lay on the ground? These are everywhere, on the ground and on the leaves. I pick them as I find them, but you can't keep up.

I've also got fuzzy white and fuzzy tan egg sacs, black orbs that look like peppercorns and this red clay like dust in various partical size everywhere. Any idea what these may be or if they're dangerous?

Ahhh...for the bee. I've got a few of these that stay all day long. They're real powerhouses.

Here's one of my many spiders.

And that, my friends, is that. You know, I'm out there 5-6 times a day, seriously, and I get a dozen Japanese beetles, a few click beetles and cucumber beetles each time. We're going to a wedding this weekend and I'm terrified about what two days without tending, let alone a full week in July when we go on vacation, will do in the pest department. I'm half serious about buying a bolt of tulle and covering the garden entirely.

The morning comes early. Sweet bug catching dreams.

Granny's a Genius

Not that we didn't already know this, but I figured to make it official.

Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden is a veritable genius. Granny's been so helpful over the past year offering advice and encouragement. She's sent me files on canning and preserving and recipes for the same. However, she found the right chord in a comment on yesterday's post. She mentioned Googleing "refrigerator pickles." Amazing! I always thought my cucumbers were toast since I don't have a canner, and I never knew you could do it without the heat. Yeah, so they can't sit on the shelf for a year, but seriously, do they ever last that long anyway?

Granny, after picking yet another pound of cucumbers today to add to the pound already in the fridge, you hit the nail right on the head. We had everything we needed to make the refrigerator pickles in the house. All I needed was some jars. I could do it in Tupperware, but the jars would at least look nicer.

My first batch made two one quart jars of what I suppose are bread and butter type pickles.

First I sliced two medium size cucumbers:

Then, I layered them by alternating placing cucumbers, sweet onions and jalapeno peppers in the jar. I don't care for the jalapeno, but I wondered if it would add a bit more to the flavor.

Continue alternating until full.

In a saucepan I heated

1 cup sugar
1.5 cups vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp celery seed

Heat and boil for one minute.

I put some peppercorns and garlic in the jars for good measure and poured the mixture over the top of the jars.

I had enough mixture to fill two 1 quart jars. As always, the magical fairy bubble wand is optional.

We'll know in a few days if it tastes okay, but a word about the mixture. It stains everything. Your cutting board, your counter top, your sink, everything. I'm assuming it's the turmeric (something I've realized I'm not so fond of and would leave out about half of it in the recipe if I was doing it again). Hopefully bleach can get some of it out.

THEN, and more on my line of pickle eating, I found this recipe which is sooo good from a comment left on the blog In My Kitchen Garden: The Sporadic Garden Journal of a Lousy Record Keeper .

1 cup mayo

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp white vinegar

1 large cucumber sliced

Salt and pepper to taste. Just mix and stash in the fridge.

I upped the vinegar from what is listed here. We like vinegar. The mayonnaise may turn you off, but when you add the vinegar it's more like a sour cream mix than anything. I think they'll either be great on their own or snap up a sandwich!

Thanks, Granny! I'm going to find a dill recipe to do for the next batch.

The morning comes early. Sweet pickling dreams.

More Harvesting -- Can you believe it!?

I'm still in awe over how much is being produced by the garden. We're seriously going to have to think about how to preserve some of this or walk to neighbors' houses and beg them to take some. Actually what I need is more neighbors like the one that came over last night. Her husband was making dinner and he realized he forgot to buy cilantro and cucumbers at the grocery. She walked over and asked if we had any. I'm not growing cilantro, but I had some in the fridge and I gave her three cucumbers we had picked yesterday. I even had enough cucumbers left over for me to have an incredible cucumber sandwich for lunch today and still some to cut up and serve with humus for an appetizer tonight and go in our gyros tomorrow.

The cantaloupe has several female flowers and now that it's running through the watermelon box, wouldn't you know it, the watermelon has decided to start growing. Go figure. The sweet potatoes in the front box by the zucchini bush is putting out runners and rooting itself along them. More beans have sprouted in the other corner yard. We have a ton of large tomatoes growing, but my fear is that they'll all get ripe at the same time. This brings me back to preserving things since I don't have a canner or a pressure cooker or whatever it is you need. I'll have to look into freezing most things which I think will be easier to begin with since even if all the tomatoes ripen at the same time I'd never get 19 pounds out of them to can anything serious. Freezing seems to be more on my scale and I'd better get on learning more, otherwise we'll be eating a lot of zucchini bread in the future. :)

Today we picked more cherry tomatoes, a cucumber, a jalapeno pepper, some more purple beans, three straight neck squash, a zucchini and yet another tick from my leg. I'm still shocked at how much more productive this SFG is in comparison to my pots last year; mind you, it doesn't take much to surpass one zucchini and a handful of small tomatoes, AND how many ticks are out there. I've never had a tick on me that I can remember and this year I've found several. I made the most of today's harvest, sans tick, and sauteed the squash and zucchini with mushrooms to go with the whole chicken I had going in the crock-pot. I've never done a whole carcass in there before and the thing just fell off of the bone. It was very good, but I need to find a way to season it a bit more next time.

I'm headed out for one more bug picking. The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Hanging Cucumbers - HA!

Somewhere there's a bad joke lurking. I planted some little bush cucumbers in hanging pots just for fun. It never occurred to me that they'd mature, and technically, I'm still not sure for don't know if you'd call this "mature."


It's worth a giggle to keep them growing a bit more.

The fortex beans are just at maturity, but the bean problems earlier this year are going to make it difficult to get more than a serving at a time out of them. I'd say by Monday we'll also be picking green bush beans. I planted heavyweight II bush beans and they seem to be full of pods. I'll start picking those tomorrow, however I'm starting to get a little wary of digging through the bush beans and cucumbers now that they're so thick you can't see your way thought them, and to add to that it's while inspecting the beans today that I met my match in the bug department.

As I was separating the beans to peer through them, I was attacked at lightening speed by a mint green grasshopper bigger than my palm. After the initial sniper attack, the grasshopper returned to his perch and sat there with his Predator-like sideways jaws of death masticating ever so methodically slow. He gave me stink-eye, stared me down and issued his challenge: Catch me if you can.

The hunt ensued complete with Adam West Batman theme music and word flashes all through the bushy, broad leaves of the beans and cucumbers. Seriously, he couldn't have picked the peppers or tomatoes for this one? I caught him by the leg once, but he retaliated like a prize fighter and beat at my hand with his unrestrained legs freaking me slap out and causing me to drop him in the process. It was time to bring out the big guns. The cups I was knocking the other bugs into were initially no match for the grasshopper's prowess, but they were all that was available. Coming up behind him, I edged him slowly into a cup with the bottom of the other making him feel like the whole thing was his idea from the start and slid the cups slowly together to stack. When I went to snap a picture of him later, he was almost dead for no other reason than having a heart attack or the like, but if he wasn't dead then, he sure was when he fell from the cup as the boy tipped it out of my hand to see the wee devil. The girl yelled, "Bee!" and stepped on it.

I guess that was the end of that, but I did catch a spotted cucumber beetle and found out the "ladybugs" I had been admiring were Mexican bean beetles. Lovely. One more squash bug has also been added to my body count.

We picked one more zucchini today, so the boy and I made our first zucchini bread. I have a feeling we'll be baking and freezing a lot of these this year. The boy and the girl both don't like "crunchies" in their bread so I have to swap out almond flavoring for actual nut pieces, but it works out well. This one wasn't my best looking, but it still tastes great.

The beans in the new corner yard's front left box are starting to sprout, yet the squirrels seem too interested in them for my comfort. I wonder if they'll get the chance to mature. We're in the pattern of heavy humidity through the days and passing thundershowers in the afternoon. It will at least cut down on the watering, but also keep them from flowering. Maybe they'll perk up in late August/September.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Those Blasted Bugs

The Japanese beetles have arrived in full force. I've removed many from the bushes this morning and each time I walk out there I get rid of two or three more. This is the first day that I've noticed there's more bugs than usual. There are tons of cucumber beetles, aphids, little cottony-jumpy things and a metallic blue wasp style bug that keeps flying around. There's one crazy spotted cucumber beetle that just won't sit still long enough to catch. I've removed several bunches of random egg sacs as well. Oddly, there are at least four ladybugs out there right now, but they all look a little different. It makes me nervous because I've seen some destructive bugs that look like ladybugs as well, so I don't know if I should leave them or not. They seem to like the pepper plants in particular, but there are no aphids on them and it appears the ladybugs are just sucking on the plants themselves.

I pulled another zucchini, more purple beans, my first few Jalapeno peppers and three more cucumbers which I'm going to take with me to a movie night at a neighbor's house this evening. None of the cucumbers seemed to be bitter. I had a bitter one last night and it sure did teach me to taste them before adding them to anything. The picture is rather poor and the cucumbers are in the wrong direction (I fixed them after the picture), but here's the plate I put together.

Thank you to Granny who sent me a whole packet on canning its processes. I'm going to see about learning how to can or freeze things well.

Lastly, here's a picture of the flowering okra. It's just beautiful, isn't it?

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

TA DA!!!

Hooray! The waiting is over. Here's what's been keeping me busy.

By now, we're all familiar with "The Corner Yard" :
Now, I'd like to introduce to you....The OTHER Corner Yard! (note stadium fan cheer here)

This is directly on the opposite side of the yard from the other garden, but the boxes are turned to face the first corner yard instead of running in the same direction with the original ones. This side of the yard only gets sun during the summer months, so it will be almost useless for two of the three seasons, but next year, this will be perfect for the boy's corn. Right now it's got sweet potatoes and butternut squash in the large back box, the front left has more bush beans and the front right has soybeans. I know it's late starting a lot of this, but I hope it will mature before it's too late. I'm also a smidgen worried about how close the wooded area is in this area. The squirrels are getting brazen, not to mention the birds I found yesterday building a nest in my bush cucumbers. This is an extra 50 sq ft to add to my space. I need to add it all together soon.

There's a story behind these boxes (there's always a story, isn't there). This weekend, the man took the boy and the girl to get the tires rotated on the truck. Sure enough the boy comes home saying, "Mommy, we got you something, but I can't tell you what it is. It's for your garden and you don't have one but it's for your birthday (Which was still four days away at this point) Do you want it now?" Poor kid couldn't handle it. So, I got my present early.

Eat your heart out, Granny!
It's a tiller! Ok, Granny, I'm sure you actually have one already, but I was incredibly thrilled. This will be great to help get out some of those roots at the end of the season and help work in new organic material. I, am a lucky gal with a husband who knows me well. So therefore, if the garden warranted a tiller, it couldn't hurt to be bigger. We built the new boxes, but it took me two days to fill them. Yesterday I did most of it, but it was just too hot so I finished it around 5:00 this morning. It was MUCH nicer. Darker, but cooler as well.

My mother gave me a set of the most magnificent gardening gloves. I have the most difficult time finding gloves to fit my hands. Women's x-small sometimes fit, but children's are too small. I have a set of these gloves that I'm already working my way though and it's fantastic to have replacement pairs since almost the whole set fits perfectly!

Another oddity of the birthday world came from my aunt. I have a book in my on-line "shopping cart" for a book store because I had a gift certificate from a student to spend, but I realized I left it at school and didn't buy it, nor did I say anything about it to anyone. My aunt must have read my mind:

I haven't read it yet, but I'm really excited. That's what I like about summer. I can read what I want without a red pen in my hand. Anyone have any books they'd like to recommend?

Anyway, enough with the birthday nonsense. I'm really rather humbled that people took the time to think of what I enjoy and gift receiving always makes me feel rather awkward. However, I found two Japanese beetles on my beans today and several cucumber beetles everywhere. I've also found some crazy flying bee looking like thing with spots on its back. No time for pictures. Gotta squash them while I know where they are. Aphids, white flies and some cotton looking jumping bugs are starting to get prolific on the tomatoes and cucumbers. I'm going to have to spray tomorrow.

Lastly, I thought to post a picture of our tally from the last two days. This is what's come from the garden with the exception of a non pictured zucchini which I forgot in the fridge. It's just amazing how much can grow in such little space.

The morning comes early, but thank God an hour later than today's. Sweet gardening dreams.

Inching Towards a Successful Reveal

Well, sports fans, I think the post I was hoping to get in tomorrow may just not make it on time. I got over half the work done today, but the heat and humidity beat me. That, and a pair of wasps is desperately trying to build a nest in the kids' play house and I was obviously irritating them.

We picked more purple beans and cucumbers today. Along with our chicken we had a sliced cucumber salad and breaded eggplant. It's an odd feeling, eating a supper that comes from the garden. The plants you've nurtured from seedlings have grown up, matured and have left the vine. Most importantly, they'll never call home in the middle of the night to get bonded out of jail.

I'm oddly content.

The morning comes early. Especially when you're going to get up at 4:45 AM to finish a project like I am. It's just too hot during the day.

Sweet gardening dreams.

Addendum: I just went back outside to do one last "bug pick" when I noticed that a zucchini that was small this morning was massive and ready for picking tonight. Amazing! Also, I promise that I looked through the side cucumber bed at least three times today and then another when I pushed the leaves aside as I hand watered, but when I went out there now I found a cucumber ready for picking. It's amazing either what you can miss or how large things grow with just a little bit of sun and water!