Posted on 06/12/2021 4:24:59 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Yes, our house had the garden, back yard and alleyway edge facing south. Never thought about that before. Dad grew a real variety but never chard. He even grew a little sweet corn and then had his cucumbers growing at the base and trailed the vines on the corn stalks. There is a small side walk from the back door to the garage and he had that lined with pots of veggies . He had lots of extra lettuce and green onions and would send me up and down the street to certain neighbors with “bouquets” of lettuce and green onions wrapped in newspaper.
Ugh! Weeds! Talked with Beau about that, last night. I am going to hand-weed the four rows of potatoes, which will be a relatively easy job, but he’s promised to run the small tiller between all the other rows/hills when he gets back from fishing.
Fishing isn’t going very well this time around. They caught better fish (Walleye and Northern) here in Wisconsin earlier this spring, but they still have a week to go.
Which reminds me - got to thaw some fillets for Fish Tacos this week. Yum! :)
Potatoes......
We created massive quantities of chopped and mulched maple and oak leaves last fall. There are still cubic yards left after mulching everything needing mulch.
I raked up a pile into a row about 10 feet long and have placed 7 potatoes on top of the undisturbed dirt under the heaped-up mulch.
So far, I have three plants growing in the leaf mulch with no dirt.
This is my only crop. My wife is the gardener and I am but a laborer and plumber for the irrigation
I think you’ll be handsomely rewarded for your Tater Efforts! I’ve had them grow fine and produce in my compost piles, before.
Can’t wait to share Potato Recipes later this season. A most useful, versatile vegetable, IMHO. :)
It’s feast or famine with the rainfall here in Central Missouri. We’ve gone from a cool, wet pattern, to a hot, dry pattern in just a very short period of time. Two weeks ago things were suffering due to too much moisture, now I’m watering. Crazy.
But that’s ok, because it’s making my plants very happy.
I spent the whole whole weekend fishing and swimming and boat riding. Now I’ll have to spend a few evenings pulling weeds to get caught back up on that.
Garlic looks to be about two weeks away from being ready to harvest. The tops are starting to die back, so I know that it won’t be long.
This happened to me once, but with compost from the city mulch site. It took a couple years for my garden soil to get happy again, but it eventually recovered fully.
You guys got slammed Friday night. Took the boat to Truman Saturday morning to go fishing. Lots of tree limbs down, and tons of shredded leaves and smallish sticks floating on the lake surface. We didn't get any wind and not one drop of rain at my place a few miles east of CoMO.
With that being said,I just got home after spending two nights in the hospital since Saturday morning. Thursday morning my cat barely bit my hand but enough that I developed a horrible infection that required those days to be hooked onto an anti bacteria IV..The hand and arm were incredibly swolen and my Temperature spiked to 102.4 by Saturday afternoon until the antibiotic started to kick in.......
Just spent the morning weeding and picking off Colorado Potato beetles and eggs off my potato plants.
I need to check my tomatoes too, to make sure they are not getting hornworms or anything else.
I can only deal with so much of insect control in a day.|
UGH!!!!!
Oh, no! Bad Kitty! Glad you’re on the mend. I’m assuming the cat is picking up the hospital bill? ;)
I plan on weeding my four rows of taters tomorrow morning when it’s cool. I’ll let you know if I have to do battle with Colorado Potato Beetles. Haven’t seen any while watering, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there! Grrr!
Do the potato beetles like tomatoes too?
I’ve not heard of/seen that cross-over, and it’s never been a problem for me, but potatoes and tomatoes are in the same genus, ‘Solanum.’
Now I HAVE to go look at my potatoes for eggs! This can’t wait until morning! ;)
I found eggs on most of my plants and a few had the hatched egg cases.
The adults I found went for a swim in a jar Dawn infused water.
They don’t last long that way. 😈
I didn’t see any egg sacks or adults, but I will take a spray bottle of dish-soapy water with me in the morning - just in case! :)
Maybe if I hadn't asked my neighbor to come over and fill her food and water bowl while I was gone she would have appreciated my return much better.........LOL!
The eggs are those little yellow things on the bottoms of the leaves. I scraped them off with an old sharp knife I don’t intend on using for food any more.
The adults are easy to knock off into the soapy water.
One thing I found worked well for hornworms on my tomato plants was a 1:1 mixture of cayanne pepper and diatomaceous earth. I sprinkled it on the leaves but it does need to be reapplied after a rain. I was really surprised, however, that it didn’t burn the leaves.
I expect some hornworms from last year escaped my attention as I did not look for them until I was trying to figure out why the leaves on my potatoes were being chowed down on. I got every one I could and killed it.
So there may not be a lot left but I will be more vigilant this year. But so far no trace of them.
One thing I discovered that worked well for finding them was a UV flashlight which can be gotten at Wal-Mart.
Some critters glow in the UV, hornworms are one but scorpions are another. Anyways, I’d go out after dusk when it was dark enough for the flashlight to work but just light enough yet to see where I was stepping.
Their racing stripes would show up in the light so they were far easier to see. Those suckers blend in so well with the tomato plants that they are really hard to find visually.
I remember your tip about the UV light! Brilliant!
"The Catalpa tree is found in forests from southern Illinois and Indiana to western Tennessee and Arkansas. First cultivated in 1754, the wood was used for fence posts and railroad ties because of its resistance to rot and the tree’s fast growth rate. Common names for this tree are many and colorful—including Cigar tree, Indian bean tree, Catawba, Caterpillar tree, Hardy Catalpa and Western Catalpa."
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