September is just days away, Hurricane Harvey has made a mess in south Texas and will continue to do so for another week, and we've been getting plenty of rain here in the Potato Hills. I didn't get all those windrows of grass clippings raked up before the rains began and now grass has grown up around them. The temperature has dropped five to ten degrees, but the humidity is still up in the 70 percent level.
Some good news: the combination of flood light and radio has kept the raccoons at bay and allowed me to get a good showing of green tomatoes. The pepper sauce sprayed on the individual tomatoes seems to have deterred the squirrels, although they have been chewing on a few tomatillos.
Squash bugs and blister beetles are the only real garden pests right now--unless you count mosquitoes. All of these creatures like having tall weeds to hide and reproduce in. I haven't done myself any favors in that respect. I let the grass grow up in the fallow areas and I've only turned over small areas at a time. If I put in a couple of good days work, I might get that all cleaned up.
I got my first handful of cherry tomatoes from the green house yesterday and the peppers are starting to blossom. There is an oscillating fan in the greenhouse helping the tomatoes and peppers self-pollinate, but I've made a point of gently shaking the flowers to manually release pollen. I've also tried the Q-tip to pollinate the peppers, but I think I need to take a small paintbrush out to the greenhouse. Those pepper blossoms are really small.
Some good news: the combination of flood light and radio has kept the raccoons at bay and allowed me to get a good showing of green tomatoes. The pepper sauce sprayed on the individual tomatoes seems to have deterred the squirrels, although they have been chewing on a few tomatillos.
Squash bugs and blister beetles are the only real garden pests right now--unless you count mosquitoes. All of these creatures like having tall weeds to hide and reproduce in. I haven't done myself any favors in that respect. I let the grass grow up in the fallow areas and I've only turned over small areas at a time. If I put in a couple of good days work, I might get that all cleaned up.
I got my first handful of cherry tomatoes from the green house yesterday and the peppers are starting to blossom. There is an oscillating fan in the greenhouse helping the tomatoes and peppers self-pollinate, but I've made a point of gently shaking the flowers to manually release pollen. I've also tried the Q-tip to pollinate the peppers, but I think I need to take a small paintbrush out to the greenhouse. Those pepper blossoms are really small.
There were actually five ripe tomatoes, but two of them didn't make it out of the greenhouse.
These aren't much bigger than grapes, but they have a rich, vine-ripened flavor.
This morning I picked a butternut squash, a handful of okra, half a dozen tomatillos and two cucumbers that had managed to stay hidden until they were over-sized. This evening I picked a pablano pepper and pulled the last of the carrots.
The early fall weather or at least unseasonable wet weather, has me unsure what to do next. On the one hand, it seems like it's time to do some garden cleanup, but on the other, it's too wet to work the soil. I still have plenty of producing plants to take care of. Most of the summer squash plants are finished and need to go into the trash so they don't infect the compost with powdery mildew.
A die-hard Blue Lake pole bean is putting on lots of new blooms.
And speaking of the compost, it needs to be turned. That's all for later. Tonight I'm going to catch up on some reading and rework my list of seeds to order for next year.
Stephen
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