Mini Garden Update

I was scanning through some YouTube channels looking for ideas to get the bugs off my peppers when I found one that recommended several books that are available on Amazon. Of course I clicked the link to see how much they were and order them when Amazon helpfully pointed out that I had ordered these very same books five years ago and was I sure I wanted to re-order them? WTF? Sure enough, I went to the bookcase where I keep all my homesteading books and there they were, unread. I kind of feel like an idiot after three years of trying to grow peppers with minimal results to show for it. At any rate, I’ve read them now and purchased and applied the insecticide/fungicide combo they suggested. I’ve got to apply it a few more times to be sure but I’ll let you know. I’m going with an organic pesticide right now. I may want to try for organic certification when I start selling eggs and other items and that takes three years of no “negative inputs” to the environment so I might as well start now.

I forgot to mention TreeSap lives about forty-five minutes away, which complicates things, but not terribly. It limits spontaneity, but it doesn’t hinder the relationship. She’ll be kid-free part of the day tomorrow, hopefully she can get some sleep. She normally has to make do with four or five hours tops, and it worries me since she works in manufacturing with all the attendant hazards. Her plant has an excellent safety record (for the area anyway) and has trained medical staff on site 24/7 but still. And maybe it’s not as bad as I imagine, having never worked a plant job myself, but I do know people who have died at their stations in similar facilities run by other companies. To date the worst she’s ever suffered is a second degree burn, and that wasn’t her fault, that was someone else that wasn’t paying attention at shift change.

One of the zucchini vines has a flower on it, so I’m assuming that the lumpy growths I saw on all the other ones are buds and maybe by the end of the week I’ll have flowers on all of them. Now if I can just get some pollinators into the yard… The luffa gourds should be germinating by the end of the week as well, they can take anywhere from three to fourteen days depending on conditions, with seven or eight being the average. I knew they’d get big, which is why I’ve got them on a sixteen foot section of cattle panel, but I was reading up on them and some of those vines can get up to thirty feet long. I might have to keep the clippers handy.

I need to fire up the gas trimmer and clear out the last of the brush in the way of my back fence so I can put the rest of it up since I’ve already got all the panels and T-posts. I also need to buy more 6×6 posts for the front fence and get it moving towards completion. I’ve got so much to do in the yard it’s not even funny. I must be doing something right though: I’ve never seen as many birds hopping through the grass eating things than I have this year, and I’ve never seen as many fireflies either. I mean I’ve only been here three years but it’s a significant increase in activity. The only thing I’ve really done different this year is my solar powered mosquito lights out in the North and South corners of the yard. The garden is bigger too, but most of it isn’t flowering plants. Oh well, I’ll take it.

Good night everyone!