The Goodness of the Garden...

Today's harvest.
Even with the heat and drought
the garden has been producing well.
Chicken poop, bunny poop and straw
are a girl's best friends.
We have been eating well and tonight
those tomatoes and peppers
will become pasta sauce.
Ok.. that is a lie.
I will pull the last of last year's
tomatoes out of the freezer for sauce
because it is the right thing to do.
I have been using the fresh tomatoes,
but I must stop!
So tonight I will be good and
use the old stuff up.
But you know...
that bowl looks like salsa to me.


And I made the fountain for the insects.
I spent $20 on a small
submersible pump,
took the galvanized tub,
a length of old sewer pipe
and an anonymous pipe that I
found in the yard,
some bricks and
Ta Da! Fountain.
It was an instant hit with
the local insect life.
Butterflies, bees, wasps
and other bugs visit daily.
I placed a small stone on top
of the pipe to make a bit of a spray
that splashes down and wets the soil
and stepping stone and the old pot
that is leaned against the tub.
It gives wet surfaces for the insects
to land on and drink from
without drowning.
I have noticed an increase of insect
activity on all of my blooming plants,
including the important ones
like my tomatoes, squashes and cukes.
I knew it would help, but I am
amazed at how quickly and how well
it has worked to draw the bugs.
Never, ever again will my garden
be without a water source.

Garden Fix-Its..

I usually don't plant squash in the
early part of the year.
The squash vine borers and squash bugs
are just too awful to justify
the effort.
But I forgot myself this year.
What was I thinking!?

But, as you can see,
they look healthy.
My secret weapon..?
The lowly syringe.
I sucked up organic insecticidal soap
into the syringe and
gave the squash vines a shot.
The vines/stems are hollow tubes
and the borers play around inside
the tubes and kill the stem
and the plant.
So, I shot the insecticidal
soap into the hollow tubes.
It worked like a charm!
I had borers and my plants were wilting
and then I didn't and the vines look healthy
and are producing great gobs of squash.
I think it also worked
upon the newly hatched borers
as they bore into the
vnes. They encountered the soaped
tubes and were killed.
Gotta think outside the box.



And we have the new tomato supports in place.
I love, love, love them!
No more struggles.
No more crazy vines everywhere.
No more collapsing supports.

And such a simple idea from Sweet Husband.
The fencing is attached to a board
and the board is hung from the
PVC with zip ties.
It can be easily taken down
and stored for the winter
and easily set up again
in the early spring
for early peas and then the tomatoes
come summer.
Great!!

Goats..

So.. we have goats.
And I love my goats,
but unrestrained, free range goats
become a problem as they get older.
They think things like apple trees
and sunflowers are delicious.


I had to do a little creative
construction on the entrance to the garden


And we finally moved the electric fence
up to the upper foundation.
It needed cleaning.


And between the 20th of June
and today..they did this!


I really appreciate the eating power of goats.
They are a real bonus around here.
And today is the first day they are
staked out. I am not thrilled about staking them out
as it is not the safest thing for the goats,
but the area we need them to clean out
is a total jungle and there is no way
I could run fence through it.
For today they are close to the house
so that I can see if they will
kill themselves on lines. If it
goes well, them I will move them farther out.
They won't be left for long and
never when we aren't here.
We have about an acre of land we can't even set foot on.
Yippee goats!