Gardening with Rabbits
Garden Master
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2012
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- Location
- Northern Idaho - Zone 5B
I hope you save the squash!Put up the trellis for the late planting of Fortex pole beans, and thinned them to final spacing (2 every 12"). Although there are still strings to tie, all trellis poles & frames are up. Also weeded around the peppers & pinched off any growing peppers, in preparation for covering the cages.
DW & I drove out to the rural garden, to see how it had fared through the rainfall. The good news: no flooding, and no sign of erosion. The bad news: about 1/2 of the garden was waterlogged, and too wet to walk in. A lot of previously healthy plants are wilting, including the entire row of Grandma Robert's Purple Pole beans. Whether that is due to wet soil, or herbicide overspray from the adjacent farm field, only time will tell (the farmer was spraying something the last time we were there). The weather will be 90's & dry for the weekend, hopefully most of the plants will recover as the soil dries out.
More bad news. We took the floating row cover with us, intending to cover the kabocha squash & pumpkins before insects appeared. When I walked out to inspect the plants, three SVB moths were already flying in & out along the row! Apparently the June heat caused them to hatch early. Cucumber beetles were also swarming on some of the vines, so it is already too late to cover the plants. Unless I can find a spray to kill the SVB eggs, it will be a battle to save the squash this year.
We re-weeded some rows & tied strings for some of the beans & bitter melon which were ready to climb; but DW is still struggling with her leg, and my knees were bothering me, so we quit early. Tomorrow will be hot, so we will go early & get as much done as we can; I hope to get mulch on the weeded areas before it rains again.