Decided to give the mower one more wack. New carb already but I later figured out I've been dealing with bad gas. Old, orange and my 5 gallon can had water in it. Last thing I had done to the mower was dump the tank and put fresh gas in it but the bowl still had bad gas and water which I took care of a this afternoon. Also put a new spark plug in.
It lives! Runs like day one and I brought it down and mowed everything I could in the grass/weed overgrown tunnel areas. I'll have to start moving things out of the tunnel, including square hay cards 3" that I mulched with. Then I can mow again, then lower the mower which is on it's highest setting and mow again. Then I can tarp it.
Stihl chain saw, I didn't get to. Will try dumping the tank and putting fresh gas in first since it will start. It's older than the trimmer so it probably needs filters, fuel lines, primer bulb, carb kit and new Bosch spark plug. I'll look into OEM stuff for that because I don't think the saws are made in China. Paid $280 for the saw but hate to spend $100 on a tune up so it may get China stuff too. We'll see.
All my old Ryobi 18V stuff still work as expected. Batteries took some charge but are weak. Good enough to make everything spin under no load. Looks the old Ryobi tools are getting a lithium upgrade soon.
Now that I have a running push mower, the cordless string trimmer is no longer a priority. That means the impact gun at 41% off is the priority before that deal is no longer. Comes with 4.0 batt/charger. Normally $269, on sale for $159. All the other items will come later and a pole saw is the only thing close to a priority.
Will be interesting to see how the old tools work with lithium. I suppose 18V is 18V but they won't have that gradual slow down since lithium stays near full strength the whole time but then dies suddenly.
Pulled two of four tomato plants that were over shadowing the habanero plants and were on the East side of them. Hoping that will help the peppers ripen sooner and the two tomato plants weren't doing great. Small fruits and all fuzzy, blotchy ripening etc. Still have two plants left but haven't seen a flower in a while so those will be coming out soon too.
That will leave the two habanero, a shisito that's petering out and the lone sugar baby watermelon that I'm growing impatient with since it's in a row by itself and preventing me from tarping most of the tunnel. I can live without a 6" watermelon. I do want to at least get a couple of ripe habenero peppers though but also need to tarp while it's still hot.
Gonna get out there in the morning and pull everything I can out of the tunnel. Two pallets with hay on them, patio table, portable tank sprayer, tools, small pieces of very heavy black plastic, black rubber mats, tools, row marker stakes - I can measure it again.
I’ve noticed that my tomato plants sometimes pause flowering for several days, and then resume. I’ve tried to tie it to weather conditions, but, while really hot weather is definitely a factor, often causing flower fall-off, sometimes the plants pause in moderate temps too, not flowering to begin with.
A shot of Bloom Booster or Super Phosphate usually encourages flowering if the weather is good, but, sometimes (less often?) plants I didn’t treat “come back” later with flowers, too. I’ve had tomato plants “resume” in early fall, other times even indeterminate types just quit entirely or even die for no apparent reason. (I suspect root diseases.)