A Little Catching Up.......

As I mentioned in my last post, we got bunches of rain this year in Florida. About 15" in one week alone. The rain wrecked havoc on my garden, but I was still able to harvest a bunch of veggies. Here's some pictures I took over the last 2 months while I was in and out from going to Honduras & Nicaragua:

A wet, wide look at the garden.....probably about a month & a half ago.




The tomatoes did well......but I bet I lost 40% due to the rain.




My first time growing corn...........and my first time dealing with Japanese Beetles! They feasted on my corn. I was only able to save a few ears.



Cukes. We have delicious pickles in the fridge right now.


Carrots.......... Crooked Neck, Magda & Sweet Lightning (bottom) Squash.



Squash, Eggplant, Sweet Potato, Garlic & Beans. The Garlic didn't do to well, so this year I bought some from a place in Texas that sells Garlic that grows in warmer areas.





And I'll end with a message for all bugs.................





Current garden pics coming next.

Back at it........

All is well. Just took a little time off to take care of some personal stuff going on in my life........mostly business & a few mission trips to Nicaragua & Honduras again. I felt a little guilty not posting pics from my garden and I think that added to my absence as well.

I'll post some pics of the garden tomorrow, but it's basically done for the season. So much rain! I think the first week in June we got 14" of rain in 5 days....I don't know if you know, but tomatoes don't like 14" of rain in 5 days! We did get a very good harvest this year (despite the rain) and I really pushed my vegetarian wife to brink with all the tomatoes we harvested. But she did keep up! I will say that this summer was our most wasteful garden because we grew so much and had so many new veggies that we didn't exactly know how to deal with the volume. So our goal going forward is to learn and practice canning & freezing methods to handle the bounty! We actually just bought our first canning kit last week and are hoping to wear it out!

The great thing about Florida is that our 2nd growing season in the Fall is just as good as the northerners Summer growing season.............. and so I'm starting to plant my tomatoes & peppers for the Fall garden tomorrow. Is that awesome or what!

Pictures to follow shortly.

Question Of The Week-End.

Am I the only one who needs a watch on when I go out to the garden in the morning so I can track/time the sun on my plants?

It goes something like this.........

To myself....."Lets see it's 8:22 and my corn & back row tomatoes are getting nice sun........if it gets shady at 4:00....... that's............almost 8 hours of sun! Very nice.........Geesh, it's 8:45 and the dang squash still doesn't have any sun.........Dang it, I've got to plant them in a different spot next time..............OK it's 9:12 .......yada, yada, yada.

Am I the only one?

Question of the week.........

Is 6 hours of full Florida sun equal to 6 hours of full Vermont sun?

Cutworms!

They're killing me. They've chomped over 25 pepper plants & 10 tomato plants this year. It started out with just a couple pepper plants getting chomped in half and I thought........"I've had some plants chomped in two before......no big deal" Well..... it was a big deal. I planted some replacements plus about 10 more and the next day..........all chomped down. I then used some paper cups cut in half to wrap around the stems and they were too low......I lost another 8. So I planted some more a couple of days ago with longer wraps.........and they seem to be working. Check it out:




Right above the dirt line they chew & chew & chew until...........



........they're chopped in half. My first attempt to sleave the stalks.......uummm, didn't exactly work out as planned.


My new style.....it's not pretty but it's been 3 days and no damage yet!

Behind The Scenes.

I know not everybody who reads this blog is a full time church goer, but for those of you who are you will relate to my past week, as I had one of THOSE church weeks. The one where all your responsibilities converge at the same time.

To start, my wife and kids are headed to Nicaragua this summer on a mission trip and one of the ways they raised money for the trip was working on a very large church yard sale. One that takes up a whole gym and lasts for 3 days. A lot goes into one of these kind of yard sales, you must set a hundred or so tables out, fill them up with millions of pounds of stuff (organized of course), put sticker prices on all the stuff and then sell the stuff. The good news is they raised over $6,000........the bad news is it has to be split 25 ways. lol. On top of that I wear a few hats at my church like Christian Ed Director, Sunday School teacher, Tenor in the choir, Advisory board member and finally Mission board member. Throw in Plumbing Contractor, Dad, Husband, and my wife and I getting sucked into watching the past 5 LOST seasons to catch up with our friends who watch & talk about it regularly, and it's been an exhausting week. Barely enough time for the garden......but I'm back!

I'd like to thank Margaret at http://life-at-thistlegarden.blogspot.com/ for waking me up to the easy solution to my squash problem. She told me to just take the male squash stamen and rub it on the female flower (or is flour Margaret?). I know it sounds dirty, but as you can see below in just one weeks time I've got some squash! I feel like a dummy!

Above: Magda squash.

Above left: Sweet Lightning, Above right: Spaghetti squash.

Above: Crooked Neck.

Above: The Squash Patch.

In the middle of my busy week I had a disaster in the garden as well........20 pepper plants chopped down like the Amazon Rain Forest by some Cutworms. It's totally my fault. I stubbornly didn't listen to the advise I got to collar the stems of the plants. I guess I though I was Super Conservative Gardener and cutworms wouldn't dare continue to mess with me. I had read somewhere where an old farmer would put nails next to his plants and the cutworms wouldn't hurt the plants because the nails would bother them. Well......take a look:



The above pick shows where there used to be about 15 plants, the rest in the pic are now gone as well. I've got a bunch more under the lights getting ready to come out to the garden. Next time......I've got some Dixie cups going around them. (And yes, that is an eggplant that I mistakenly planted with the peppers)

And of course no blog would be complete without an update on my favorites........the Tomatoes.




I'm excited about the tomatoes.....they look strong! The cutworms did get about 5 tomato plants, but I had some ready to take their place. (btw- you can click on any picture and it will bring you to my Flickr page where you can enlarge the pic if you want. Just don't go browsing around my Flickr invading my privacy......lol, just kidding)


Well that's quick update, I'll see if I can do my next post without letting a whole week go by!

One Big Mistake.

Since I was a Junior in High School when I moved to Florida way back in '82 (like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite), I had to visit the Guidance Counselor to figure out how to transfer my school history from Massachusetts to Florida, and then calculate the classes I needed to take to graduate from a Florida school. The Counselor made it known that my schooling in New England was stronger than what I was going to get in Florida, and that I only needed a few classes to graduate by the first quarter of my Senior year.

"Cool", I said.

So they gave me a list of classes to choose from, and on that list was a class that caught my eye.........French 1.

You see, where I lived in Western Massachusetts there's a nice little French population. I lived right on the Connecticut River near the Vermont border, and if you follow the river north through Vermont & New Hampshire (the Connecticut River is actually the boarder between the two states) all the way up to Canada you'll find yourself in French Canadian country.....Montreal, Quebec City, etc. You can actually listen to radio stations broadcast only in French in that area. So it was common in our school system for kids to take French as a language class requirement, and so I did......for 2 years. As in French 1 and then French 2. I should have been going into French 3 to continue my studies.

You must know that I was a terrible French student. Mostly C's & D's with a B- as my peak grade. Making matters worse, my French teacher, Mr. Routhier, had his son in my class who, obviously, was an A student. I was the antithesis of his son ,who spoke French like a Parisian. Needless to say I was also an annoyance to Mr. Routhier and he rode me hard for 2 years. So much so, that the only thing I can say in French to this day is....."Fermez la bouche, vous etes un cretin".........translation......."Shut your mouth, you're a moron". lol. Seriously.

So when I saw the French 1 class on the list I started to think......"Don't they know I've already had 2 years of French? Is this a test? Are they serious? They don't really know? If I'm able to take French 1 again.......I think....I think... I could do well. Will my old school tell the new school? Can I get this past my parents?...... If I check it and they say something, I'll just say I checked the wrong box.....yeah, that's what I'll do"

So I checked the box. (Routhier be damned!). I showed up to class and the teacher busted out the basics......la garcon (the boy), les femme (the woman), parlez-vous francais (do you speak french) and so on. Well! I was a master. Before long all the girls in the class surrounded me and were stunned at the ease in which I mastered the French language. Yes.....Mr. Routhier......I was a "star", an *A* student in French!

I never told anyone and nobody ever asked (my parents still don't know), but I was the best French 1 student in the history of Deland High School. How they ever overlooked such a thing I have no idea. Which brings me to my point.................

How I ever overlooked the need to have flowers around my garden to attract bees I have no idea. But I did. I'm like the Guidance Counselor and overlooked an easy, obvious issue. So I had to humble myself (if only I could humble that Routhier! lol!) and go to Lowe's to BUY some flowers and hope that I attract some bees to pollinate my squash before........the pickleworms get here! One big mistake.............. I won't make again.