Since I was taking photos for today’s Bloom Day post, I decided to shoot a few things that showcase the not so pretty things happening in my garden…
Trellis failure. I don’t know what I was thinking when I used tiny little bamboo stakes to make cone trellises for the cucumbers. They’re WAY too small, and the cucumber vines have outgrown them, knocked them sideways, and escaped their bed. I’ve been following Neil Sperry on Facebook, and he gave a good solution for training vine crops, which I will be implementing with the fall plantings. Jeez…
Second verse, same as the first. The tomatoes took over and are way too big for those spindly bamboo stakes. I’ll be caging the fall crop. And yeah, these are all but dead from blight and various other issues—but they’re covered in fruit that’s still ripening, so even though this is ugly, it’s staying for another few weeks.
The zucchini and yellow squash are all but destroyed from squash vine borers. They’ve been really bad this year, and have managed to infest all six plants, gnawing completely through one zucchini stalk. I’ve only harvested a handful of squash this year, which is disappointing. Bastards!
I even found squash vine borers starting to infest the new acorn squash vines, but I’m being a little more aggressive in my care of these. This morning, I went after the borer grubs with a knife, slitting into the tender stalks, and scraping them out. Then, I put down foil collars around the bases, which is supposed to slow the adults down a bit.
From the What the Hell file, I have these two pics. Last year, the nubby wood portions of the photos were big, healthy, blooming like crazy Mexican petunias—the short ones. I loved them, because they sported mounds of purple flowers all summer. Cut to the winter snow, which froze them, and turned them into black slime. I decided to leave the remaining wood stumps alone, in hopes they’d come back. I waited, and waited, and waited, and finally, about two weeks ago, I noticed what looked like a bad weed infestation. I looked closer, and couldn’t decide—weeds, or petunias gone wild? Sure enough, they’ve leafed up, and the petunias, which grow through underground runners, have multiplied and returned. I’m not sure they’ll get big enough to flower this year, but holy cow, there sure are a lot of them. If they haven’t grown into flowering bushes by the fall, I think I’ll pull some up and bring them inside to winter on the window sill, for next spring’s planting.
Plants that I won’t ever bother purchasing in larger than four inch pots: these two sweet potato vines. They’re annuals, and aggressive growers. Both of these were four inchers about a month ago, and are now outgrowing their beds. I have them sort of growing over other plants that are happy for the shade. Last summer, I only had one of these, and I hacked it back every other week, and it still grew like a tidal wave.
