Tag Archives: pests and disease

The not so glamorous side

Cleaned out the coop - about a month and a half of poop in there - eeewwwww.

Before

After
Honestly, it only takes about 15 minutes to clean out - rake the crap out the door into an old plastic toy bin, toss it into the compost pile. Takes about 3 trips to the pile, then toss in about a quarter of a bale of wood shavings. Yes, that is a colored plastic easter egg you see in the middle nest box. It functions as a clue - "lay your eggs here dear, not in the middle of the floor"

What?

Mavis (in the box) fills Mini in on just what the nest box is for.

Garden

The Garden is not the happiest of gardens. Between the heat, dry, then heat and deluge, we are not about to win any beauty contests.

Next weekend is slated for garden clean-up and fall planting. Meanwhile we had some big issues which I have a thought on fixing for next year. Squash vine borer beetles destroyed all the zucchini, my cucumbers succumbed to cucumber wilt about 3 weeks after my neighbor's - the wilt is spread by the cucumber beetle. I did get a couple of jars of refridgerator pickles out of them - Yummy!

On the positive side, neem oil and a good layer of fresh compost made the potato pots very happy and they have lots of nice new growth.

See the bean tee-pee in back there? I am definitely planting a bean tee-pee next year!


I love the purple runner beans, they are beautiful and mighty tasty!



The butternut squash is pretty happy, as is the chard.
I now know just what radishes look like if you do not pick them, I am not convinced actually repelled any bugs, but they are really nifty.


And last but not least - I got to try out my nifty harvesting apron!