Snoopin’ with the Snoop

I weeded a lot of grass. And have blisters on my right ring and pinky fingers. Photos:

This may be called a sunflower, but this one doesn't follow the sun.

One of the varieties of sunflowers that I planted this spring (early summer – I put in my garden really late), was Autumn Beauty from Baker Creek. And I thought this was one of them until I went to attach the link and read that the Autumn Beauties are supposed to be 7 feet tall. This one is about three, if that. It may be one of the transplants out of the peat bag: a poor mouse who ate its way into the peat bag with a tummy full of sunflower seeds and then couldn’t get out, died, and then after partial decomposition, the sunflowers sprouted and grew. Imagine my surprise when I opened a brand new peat bag (which had been sitting in the garage for years) and found two plants growing in it. Or maybe, this sunflower is from some of my old seed packets that I planted to see if they would germinate 3 years after I bought them. Ahhh, wait. I think it’s the Torch variety. That would make sense, now that I’ve Googled it. The Torch Mexican Sunflower is Tithonia rotundifolia, which would explain why it doesn’t follow the sun. But no, wrong again. See photo on Baker Creek website. Enough waffling. It’s a flower in my garden. Another sunflower I have, which is currently at least six feet tall has not yet bloomed. The flower dimensions are there, but are green and haven’t opened. These not-bloomed heads have been following the sun for about the last two weeks. I stumped about Shorty.

As for the other side of gardening, the bugs:

Don't know what this is, but it sure is brilliant.

That red and orange striped beetle-like bug stuck around long enough for me to run inside and grab my camera. I don’t know what s/he is, so I don’t know if it’s a beneficial or a pest. Speaking of pests:

A margined blister beetle – bane of my amaranth – Epicauta pestifera

Munch. Munch. Munch munch munch munch. Chomp. Swallow. Munch. Not to mention they poop all over the leaves they eat. Yeah, I’m not touching my Tiger-Eye Amaranth. The Hopi Red Dye Amaranth that was a volunteer plant this year (I originally planted them in 2007 but did not harvest them, because I was in NC) is untouched — for now. I like to eat the Hopi Red Dye. Before the Blister Beetles came around I wasn’t too much of a fan of the Tiger-Eye, so I won’t be planting it again. I’m wavering between exterminating them, picking them off and throwing them in the beanfield where the chemicals that are already there will kill them, or trying that lime-flour attack I read about this morning (a mixture of lime and flour doused on them and the plants at the hottest part of the day). They weren’t dining when I was in my garden this morning; I first saw them around 1 or 2 p.m. today.

It appears I also have a Golden Digger Wasp building a nest between my tomatoes and carrots/beets/fennel. (Video forthcoming when I can get it to export out of Kino, which depends on my downloading mjpegtools, apparently. We’ll see.)

A full grown Japanese beetle flew into my face today, but was young enough to fall off and be smashed. At least, I hope I smashed it. Otherwise when it wakes up it will be nicely positioned next to my growing squashes.

This has the shape and size of a Japanese Beetle, but has not yet emerged from the ground.

I had hoped with the summer coming much later than usual (just this week, and it came with 95 degree >50% humidity days, with four Rate 11’s [a special program offered by our electricity provider that cuts off the electricity for no more than 2 hours between 4-6pm on excessive heat days] in a row), that perhaps they had all died off. I still hope that there won’t be so damn many of them, eating our trees to shreds, eating my rosebrambles to shreds…

The picture to the left is not the one that flew into my face, but one I uncovered while moving my firepit. I had double-lined the firepit with bricks when I first dug it two years ago, and this was beneath the second brick. What I assume is the younger larval stage of a Japanese Beetle was under another brick, but after looking at larvae on the internet, think the younger one may be a stag beetle larvae. [

Is this a Japanese Beetle larva?

]

Japanese beetles don’t like tansy, but tansy’s a weed that is impossible to get rid of without chemicals. (I assume this only because they do not attack the rose bush that is near the tansy.) Regardless, I’m probably going to be shredding tansy and garlic and cayenne peppers and dousing them with it again this year. So far I have seen no damage to the plants from giving them the stinky bath. Sometimes, I go along the plants and drown the beetles, let them sit in the Sun for weeks, and then add them to the garlic/tansy/cayenne mixture. Stinky multiplied!

Thus far in my vegetable garden, I have in broccoli, peas and beans from last year (the scarlet runners are from 2 years ago), all of which have at least one sprout up and protected from the bunnies who have very much of other stuff to eat. Well, the broccoli is not protected. I’m going to check it tomorrow. We got 1.5 inches of rain yesterday, and a tornado warning due to rotation over my town, which became a funnel cloud over some towns farther east, but no tornado. I wish I’d seen the rotation, yet except for the rain and the initial entrance, it was a pretty calm storm here. Actually, as I headed inside from the front porch when the squall line first arrived, with rain drilled in from the NW hitting my face, the wind snatched the door out of my hand and threw it open toward the NW. So I may have had a taste of the rotation even if I didn’t see it.

Since we were under a tornado watch yesterday morning until 2pm (with the NWS issuing us a second one until 10pm), I figured it was going to rain, so I planted okra and carrots, scallions, and radishes yesterday. Didn’t expect such a deluge, and I hope my seeds didn’t wash away. All my seeds this year, except for fodder radish for cover, and turnips, are from last year. The radishes I planted yesterday were the leftover White Hailstones from last year. There are a few volunteer radishes, hot! in tasted, and a few volunteer scallions, which taste a bit like hot peppers though they weren’t near those last year, and the usual volunteer dill and mustard. And one or two volunteer carrots that I’ve tried not to disturb as I create the other beds, but they’re so fragile that they’ve tended to disappear.

Whether or not it’s a good planting practice, I enjoy throwing a lot of species in one bed, making sure of course that i don’t plant varieties that dislike each other. I’m not sure that I’ll be here come harvest time again, and I’m a bit annoyed. But I’m planting it nonetheless. Just not going to plant anything that will cause a weedy mess. There was a warning written on the buckwheat package to harvest it or mow it down instead of letting it go to seed, because it would cause a weedy mess. Two days before I left for north carolina last year, I realized that buckwheat is the same species as bindweed (Buckwheat post). And of course, it went to seed after I left because I didn’t take it down. And there’s a ton of bindweedy-looking plants in the back half of the garden. Joy. And tansy! Has invaded the vegetable garden. What fun.

A few days ago, I wrote of the endless carpet of pigweed in the vegetable garden. Yesterday, to prep the garden for planting, I weeded out just the plots where I planned on planting — and only for the areas that I planted yesterday. I couldn’t help nibbling the small leafy greens. For their size, they were quite bitter.

Rain prevented me from going out in the garden today, but no matter. The weeds will continue to grow and will provide a suitable cover until I can get the rest of the seeds planted. I just have to make sure that I mow them before they go to seed, right? Lessons learned…

Vegetable Plan, 2008

My contract with the NCC ended on May 2. While I wait for my Americorps education award to arrive so that I can enroll to get a math education degree, I’m focused on cleaning my parents’ house. They are helping me by offering me the job so that I can not pay rent while working towards my degree, and I’m doing a lot of dejunking/painting/organizing for them. For wanting to be outside all the time, I’ve spent most of my time inside the last few days since getting back from Vegas. Playing Guitar Hero III. Re-leveling up to expert. I’m not sure if I’m having such difficulty because the only TV in the house is from the early 80s and does not even have composite jacks, or if I’m really the out of practice. I have the PS2 system hooked up to my computer via a PCMCIA card that has a jack that converts the composite to a digital. The card inserts where it is supposed to and relies on a program that would allow me to watch TV and VCRs on my computer. Thankfully, it also allows one to play games via game systems on one’s laptop. In addition to only being at Medium at the moment, I’m really good at covering up the IR wireless connection on the guitar as I’m playing, and usually only realize why I failed after I fail the song. Grrr.

But back to the title. Stumping.

Last summer, I tried to eliminate a stubborn tree from the wildflower garden, by cutting off all the shoots and leaving it under a black plastic garbage bag all summer. Guess who’s back. Well, this year, after learning everything that I learned while with the NCC, I took out the gosh darn stump. Not the stubborn one yet, but the stump of the same kind of tree that WAS in the front of the garden. That was a nice little work out last evening. Though the climate is humid here, I barely broke a sweat. And I had so much fun with the pick mattock, half axe, axe, saw, spade, and clippers. I did realize though, this morning, that from May 2 – May 14, when I was getting a lot of cardiovascular exercise and using my legs a lot, that my upper back strength waned a bit. But between gardening and painting, the muscles will stick around.

Speaking of the (vegetable) garden, I’m dumbfounded at the amount of lambs quarters aka pigweed (Chenopodium album L) that has taken root. A green carpet of lambs quarters. At least the stuff is edible (and in the same family as spinach). I don’t really have to buy any salad greens at the grocery store. The entire garden is covered with the green fuzzies. Although I usually let a patch grow, I have a huge task in front of me. The garden is about 30′ x 50′. I am surprised that the mustard didn’t come back though. A few onions came back, but that’s about it. I’m waiting to see if the buckwheat crossed with the bindweed, and what sort of disaster that will be…