Posts about gardening and related topics, such as canning and maybe other aspects of food preservation.
She’s back.
I would love to think of gardening as something that’s done by the calendar. Plant your peas (and potatoes) on St. Patrick’s Day. Don’t plant tomatoes before Mother’s Day. Mind your mayflies and your June-bugs. Continue reading Post #G21-033: 1000 growing degree days and the squash vine borer
This post follows on a series of posts regarding cucumber beetles. You can read the background in Post #G21-027.
(Source for photo: University of Kentucky).
This year, I have a plan of sorts for dealing with cucumber beetles. Continue reading Post #G21-032: Cucumber beetles, bee-proof sticky traps, neem oil.
I’m growing patty-pan squash for the first time this year. In doing my research, I got all kinds of information about germination times, time to maturity, disease resistance, and so on.
What nobody bothered to tell me is how darned cute the fruit are. At least, for this variety. Based on what I’ve seen pictured, I was all set to harvest fruit that looked like some sort of alien starfish. But mine are turning out to be cute little yellow pumpkins. Seriously, I was expecting ugly, and I got this instead.
This is a followup to Post #G21-029, where I made some bee-proof cages for yellow sticky traps. By surrounding a sticky trap with 1/8″ mesh hardware cloth, I hoped to catch cucumber beetles and not catch bees, butterflies, or other beneficial insects. Continue reading Post #G21-030: Bee-proof sticky traps, and potential solutions to a cucumber beetle problem
See Post #G21-028 for the background. Briefly, I’m trying to get rid of cucumber beetles in my garden. The last time I tried sticky traps for this I caught many beneficial insects along with cucumber beetles. At which point, I called that a failure and tossed out the sticky traps.
Today’s question is, can I set up a sticky trap that will catch cucumber beetles and not catch beneficial insects?
In this post I show the simple construction of a “bee-proof” sticky trap. It’s a sticky trap enclosed in a fine-mesh (1/8″ square) hardware cloth cage.
I have no idea yet whether or not these will work. This post documents the construction of the bee-proof sticky traps. Next post will give the results, if any. Continue reading Post #G21-029: Bee-proof cucumber beetle traps, Part 2
Following up from the last post, I want to surround some insect sticky traps with wire mesh. I want that mesh to be small enough to exclude bees and butterflies, but large enough to allow cucumber beetles through. Continue reading Post #G21-028: Bee-proof yellow sticky traps
Source: University of Kentucky
This year, I thought I’d avoid cucumber and summer squash pests by growing those vegetables as spring crops only. Plant as early as possible, harvest what I can, then tear them out in early July and replace them with some heat-loving vegetables. Instead of spending half my summer trying to defend those plants, the plan was to grow them when they are easy to grow, and replace them when their main pests arrived. Continue reading Post #G21-027: Cucumber beetles.
We’re having something of a spring heat wave on the U.S. East Coast. Several of my cool-weather crops bolted, including a bed of arugula (a.k.a. rocket).
Once arugula has bolted, it isn’t good for much. Conventionally, it becomes too hot and bitter for salads.
I picked it anyway, figuring it had to be good for something. If nothing else, the neighbor’s guinea pigs like fresh greens. I ended up with a pound and a half of arugula leaves.
I read that cooking arugula reduces those off flavors. The suggestion being that you can eat it cooked, after it has bolted, even if you wouldn’t want it in a salad. Continue reading Post #G21-026: Bolted Arugula Soup
I first wrote about the 2021 canning lid shortage in March (Post #G21-003). The number of hits on that posting continues to ramp up, suggesting that, if anything, the lid shortage may be getting worse.
But how bad is it? How often are canners across the U.S. going to their local hardware or other stores and finding empty shelves where the lids ought to be? Am I getting hits from a few scattered localities where lids are unavailable? Or is this really a nation-wide shortage of lids? Continue reading Post #G21-025: Demonstrating the scope of the canning lid shortage via a random sample of Walmarts
5/16/2021, 2:45 PM, lat/long 38°53’44.1″N, 77°16’07.7″W: Unidentified Fruiting Objects observed roughly 2 meters above ground level. Continue reading Post #G21-024: Plant pears for your heirs
