Cabin Treasures 

2016 June

6/1: My garden has been a struggle this year, esp since I got this thing called early blight and didn't recognize it till almost too late as I've never been afflicted with it before...and hopefully never again. I did get to pick a few veggies today tho.....

6/2: One of the things that is growing pretty good still are my wildflowers, nasturtiums and marigolds....

6/3: I lost most of my cukes on one bale and almost all on the other bale, so I planted some more cukes...

 6/8: So I got my first ripe tomatoes, a couple of yellow cherry style, which my daughter said tasted awesome. Some of my tomato plants look they are gonna die from that fungus and others MAYBE are gonna pull out of it. My new cuke seeks are up though, YEAH!. My lettuce is doing great too, now that I killed all those tiny tiny black bugs. My peppers seem to have taken a hit from this fungas as well.....

 So I guess I should confess....I did as much damage as the early blight did; I was trying so hard to do all the right things and went to put some Neem Oil on, as I have many times, and forgot to mix it with enough water; I'd been using a pump type canister for the anti-fungal stuff for the blight, and I usually use the container that hooks to the hose and automatically mixes the neem oil with a certain amount of water as it sprays to water it down, but I had been so focused on the antifungal that when I went to do the neem oil I just put in another pump type sprayer with some water and used it on every plant...... and so after I bought 40 new plants (tomato, peppers and cukes) and planted them, and not wanting them to get sick, sprayed them all with the neem oil concoction, plus rest of garden, with the neem oil that I forgot to dilute enough, and managed to make the remainder of my tomato plants look like they wished they were dead along with pretty much everything else in the garden except the onions and the radishes...........so each day I go out and  try to cut off all the dead leave hoping they don't keep over. I'm gonna lose some more but hopefully not as many. I figured it out after a couple of days when I couldn't figure out why every thing started having this funky brown in a weird pattern. Then I looked at the pump I had used and realized what I had done. At that point I sprayed every plant with high volume water hose to try to wash whatever was left, off.....and started cutting leaves again.

6/9: My flowers are looking good....I have to focus on those because I'm so discouraged with the rest of my garden. I keep cutting off the yellow leaves and hoping they will survive. I did notice the the potatoes that I broke off all the yellow tubers and planted again in a different bales, some of them are starting to grow plants again...so we will see. Several of the tomato plants I bought and planted...then killed with under-diliuted neem are probably goners...some may make it. Still, all are suffering from my stupidity :( I also found out this week that the on/off on the water splitter that feeds my timer on my soaker hoses, had been turned off, so my bales hadn't been getting water via soaker hoses for who knows how long. I have been manually watering them some as they looked really dry but.....if it's not one thing it's another .....

6/12....so...some of my plants are going to survive it looks like...especially since the water feeding my time soaker hoses is on again.....I bought 3 more tomato plants and replaced the 3 worst ones of mine. May have to do some more....we will see. again, still cutting yellow leaves off everthing but some of them are looking better (although pretty bare LOL).

so...below we have cukes; the new ones I just planted are looking good. the bigger one I bought is looking like it has one of the disease known to affect cukes, spread by the cuke beetle, which I've seen several of lately....so I sprayed it with 3 n 1 organic liquid and will keep checking....since that's what killed by cukes late in the year last year, I'm trying to get a handle on it early this year....

 Nothing seems to have adversely affected my carrots this year. They are getting big and looking good.

 Some of my bell peppers are not doing too badly altho all lost a few leaves after the "Neem" accident and the underwatering issue....

 These are the colored banana peppers I bought and I LOVE to look at them, hope they are as good to eat. Since I've not grown this kind that look upside down before, I don't know if they are going to get bigger like my other banana peppers or if they stay small. These are already turning orange and beautiful...

 This is the other plant of this same kind; both went from yellow peppers, to purplish peppers (same as my other bigger banana peppers usually do); this one is not quite as far along the orange transition yet though.

 This is my yellow pear tomato plant that is producing well. I called it a yellow cherry before, but technically it's called a yellow pear tomato...however they are about the same size as cherry tomato. My daughter wanted some straight yellow ones because they are less acidic. And even some of it's leave are still yucky from the "Neem" incident....but it seems to be surviving ok.

 So after the "Neem" incident, as we are calling my stupidity born of exhaustion that day), My letttuce just looked like all the edges had been burned. I finally gave up and cut the top 6-8inches off down to about 3 inches left of stubble and just let it grow back; normally I do that just to harvest, but I had to throw that all away...so sad....anyway...NOW it's back to it's full height and glory and looking AWESOME!

 The onions also don't seem to be affected by any of the diseases so far...however they are affected by my planting so very many and many fell over and touched the ground because they were so close to the edge so we harvested several....they smell so good even just walking by them.....and they are so sweet and strong to eat as well.

 2 bales of onions....growing the best I've ever had them grow. yellows and whites. It's funny, the ones I bought and transplanted as little "starts" about 3-4" tall, did not do NEARLY as well as the baby bulb "sets" that I planted a couple of weeks laters....note to self LOL

 

 Sweet potatoes doing pretty good, few buggy leaves so dusted them, but mostly doing good, pulled a few yellowish leaves off yesterday, probably still from the "Neem" incident, but a couple are already starting to vine up the trellis....they are loving this hot weather....they are probably the best hot weather plant there is in my garden. I have 4 bales of sweet potatoes and lots of plants so next several pix are sweet pot.

 So this is the only one of my potato plants that actually looks decent; all the rest are mostly small but they do have fresh good green leaves growing and they are still making potatoes underground so I'm gonna leave them and see what they will do. The potatoes I pulled up, took all the tubers off (that started this early blight, and I think maybe brought it with them or maybe they were just the most vulnerable, but that brand which was mixed throught out the other brand and planted a couple of weeks later, they each got the early blight first, before any of the adjoining plants.) I planted in a different bale and some of them are starting to have nice green leaves again. so we will see how they do as well. It's all an experiment. I was told they wouldn't grow if I pull all the tubers off and replanted....but some of them are, and the leaves are green, not yellow.

So the beans got hit really bad with the early blight as well before I knew what it was, because they were  planted in alternating bales with the potatoes. I had to cut more than half the leaves off the first round that had the blight, but new leaves started coming out; I did cut a few yellow leaves after the "neem" incident, but they seem to be coming out of it, they are not great big plants like I usually have, however some of the ARE producing and I have baby green beans growing....

 I also decided I would experiment and plant some more beans inbetween the bean plants I have and see if they will grow/survive without the blight and maybe give me some harvest as well...you never know. I know it's a little late but it will only cost me the price of the seed to do this little experiment so.....

 So....NONE of my tomato plants look great or even close to what they were this time last year, after being attacked first by the early blight and then my by stupidity in the form of the "neem" incident, however a few seem to be starting to come out of it. I cut yellow leaves all off every couple of days and today I actually went through and cut all the small shoots and mostly empty stalks completely off at the ground to try to help whats left grow better. Any stalk that only had a few good leaves I just cut the whole stalk or if it was a branch with almost all bad leaves, I cut that branch off. We will see if this pruning will help them come out of it faster. I DID spray all the plants with high velocity water sprayer after a couple days when I realized what I had done with the "Neem" and that seemed to help some. There are a few I will still pull as soon as the one tomato on the vine with no leaves, ripens so I can pick it. They are a lost cause, but hey I'll take the one tomato before I pull them. I will probably buy and plant some more after I pull those. But here are some of my tomato plants; you can see the really yellow ones with few leaves and spotted tomatoes that happpend as a result of the "neem" incident and they prob won't survivie. But hopefully, the others will come out of it.

 I just wanna say I've never been able to get dill to grow before, but this year.....it's taken off like a house afire....it's so tall and awesome....my friend is so excited so she can use it to make her dill pickles this year (I like sweet and bread and butter but I'm growing dill for her, and because it's supposed to help my cukes).

 This is my second batch of radishes and these are icicle radishes....they are yummy.

I apparently planted the okra too early given the cool temps we had early on (so unusual for OK, and also combined with the daily rain we had, what caused by early blight), so I just pulled them all when they got sick and decided I'd start over. It's been a couple of weeks and it's realllly warm now (in the high 90's today) so I planted more okra in my okra bale....hope it does great.

 Sorry I haven't been able to post pix and blog more timely the last 2 weeks; between fighting the critters, the blight and working on the cabin, I've been swamped. I've been using my beer bait and getting 2-3 a day so I caught the slugs early this year. I've had several cuke beetles this week so will continue to fight those as well.

6/14: My garden planting has evolved, as it always does, throughout the year; so I've provided an updated schematic and then provided a picture of each bale to correspond that bale. I've numbered the bales and corresponding pix so you can get a better concept of garden.



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 6/16 Well , I finally got all the pix loaded and numbered above. I saw this morning during my garden walk through, that my newly planted okra was peeking up and my new little cukes are looking awesome; I've seen several cuke beetles this week on the few remaining older cuke plants and the radishes beside them, so I sprayed them as well as all the new tender plants to try to rid the cuke beetles, since that's what ultimately killed my cukes late in the season last year. My beans are starting to come out of early blight and the new tomatoes and peppers I planted are looking good. Continuing to harvest onions, radishes and extensive amounts of lettuce, few peppers and a few tomatoes so far as well. Because of the early blight attack, my garden is somewhat behind in maturity that my gardens usually are at this time of the year, but hopefully I'll still be able to reap enough harvest to do some canning and preserving.

6/18: My flower bales are coming out nicely....lots of butterflies, some wasps and some bees.

 6/21/16: it's so good to see the blooms popping out all over...makes a person smile :)

 Finally getting a blooms on the cukes

New batch of cukes coming up and looking good as well

Nice to see some of the red tomatoes ripening...yellows are good, but reds:)

 These interesting 'colored banana"  peppers are still about the same size; they've changed colors through yellow, to purple to orange and now the tips are getting red....since I've never done these before, I don't know if they are going to get any bigger or not; the peppers themselves are only about 1 1/2-1 3/4 in long.

 Sweet potatoes are loving this hot weather and starting to vine many inches a day-loving it !

6/22: Tomatoes are finally coming around altho I have several that are in final stages of death from the blight, just waiting for the 1 tomato on each to ripen so I can cut them down.

 I've harvested a lot of onions lately and have several curing for winter.

 My okra is doing good-this round, now that it's hot :)

 Peppers are doing ok, have harvested several both bells and banana...

 Beans and potatoes still struggling from their initial bout with the early blight....

My melons are starting to take off finally....watermelon and cantaloupe

My sweet potatoes are loving this heat...me?not so thrilled about the 100+ temps and 115* heat index...

Seems like this year I've fought and fought just to keep the garden alive and I'm not used to it struggling quite this much...but even the pioneers had good years and not so good years....

6/25: Check out my wildflowers that I planted....they are doing a good job of attracting bees and other butterflies etc....plus just plain pretty :)

6/29: More wild flowers....and pix of melons and sweet potatoes....both happily vining...

melons....

and sweet potatoes...have 4 bales of sweet pot; one bale has plants that are about 6in tall and just starting to vine, those are the last ones I planted. I hve this bale and the one below it that are at the next stage of vining and I'm starting to tie them up with pantyhose (which all good gardeners know is an excellent repurposing of a product many of us hated :) then as they attach to the trellis I don't have to keep tying-it's just to get them started in the direction I want them to go....up....not all over the ground and all the other plants like they tried to do last year. The last pix of sweet potatoes is the bale I planted first, so of course they are vining much taller. I'm training the ones on the middle pic to go along the wire line I placed above it so I can train them to run over the the trellis then I will train them to go up as well.

and last but not least....my cukes....as you know I lost almost all but a few plants of my original planting....however I started over, planted a whole new batch and they are finally coming around....so this way (I tell myself) that we will have them coming on at different times, my next door homesteading friend at I, that way we can keep canning pickles and pickle products forevvvvvvvver :)

6/30: a little friend, and many of his brothers and sisters....have been frequenting my dill as I harvest it...