In the Organic Garden: 2020 the year of the Borer

 The garden is growing pretty well. This is the second year I have used alfalfa meal as my nitrogen fertilizer. It has done well even though its been the pandemic year of the borers! I have encountered many borers this year. Borers are like a small caterpillar that bores into the stem of a plant and then the borer eats it's way up the inside of the stem basically killing the plant slowly. I first encountered one in a pepper plant. The top of the plant just wilted for no apparent reason.

This plant was actually in the garden and I dug it out and replaced it because I did not think it was savable. If you look partway up the stem you see the tell tale hole where the borer went into the plant.

I watched a youtube video to learn how to slit the stem upwards to find the borer. 

You can see the little caterpillar on the leaf after I pulled it out of the stem and squished it a bit. On the right you see the plant. As I did not think it was going to come back to life, I ended up cutting it off. Since it had a few leaves at the bottom I figured I would just see how it did. 

This is that same banana pepper today. You can see it grew back with a vengeance and has set quite a few fruit. I am truly amazed! After the pepper plant, two of my tomato plants had the same wilt of the top part of the plant, and upon inspection I found the borer hole. 

I cut upwards from the hole, split the stem a little bit with the tweezers, and kept going up until I found it and pulled it out. As the video on YouTube showed, I wrapped the stem using the medical wrap I found in the first aid box. It worked very well as it stuck to itself and would be expandable. The video had said that the plant probably wouldn't do much after the borer extraction, but like the pepper plant I let grow giving it some water every day for about a week to help it re-establish itself. You can also see my grass clippings in the garden for mulch which helps the second problem of blight from splashing back on the plant. 

As you can see, the plant recovered nicely! It even grew another leader from below the wrapped area. Next year I am going to try a yellow container with soap water at the beginning of June per the suggestion of my friend Gosia, because the adult moths are sometimes attracted to it and will drown before they lay their eggs. 

This is what my soil top looked like at the start of the planting season. I am sorry I didn't get it posted at the start of the season, but better late than never I guess. In this picture you see egg shells, potash (hard to see) and then the alfalfa meal on the top of the soil. This all gets raked into the soil and that's all there is to it. Our growing season isn't much longer than 3 months and that is usually how long organic fertilizers last. I did notice that my green beans looked like they had used up the nitrogen in the soil so about the second week of August, so I sprinkled a little bit more alfalfa meal around the plants for a late season boost. 

I leave you with one of my favorite visitors to the garden, the swallowtail butterfly. I always plant some carrot seeds just in case one of them needs to lay their eggs in the garden. As with many other things this year we need to look for the positive or the beauty in life in order to keep our sanity. So get outside and happy gardening!

Baby Quilt for Kolby and Cydney

This it the baby quilt I made for Kolby and Cydney (and my first grand baby!) The fabrics overlap with the blanket I made for Laura & Scott because these two babies will be very close in their arrival.

Baby Quilt for Laura & Scott

This is the baby quilt I made for Laura & Scott's baby to be. It was fun to make and to give!

Quilt for Johnny & Mary

I thought I had posted this quilt but finally realized I did not. This is the king sized quilt I made for my nephew Johnny and his wife Mary. It took me a while to figure out the color scheme as you can see they wanted colors fading in and out. Turned out quite nice!

In the organic garden; 2019 planting

I have finally finished planting my garden. It is off to a good start. This year my fertilizers are alfalfa meal, egg shells, and potash. I will see how this works and then decide if I like it.

Tomatoes are near the far end of the garden this year as my rotation puts them there. I use the 1/3 rule of rotation because my garden isn't very large. You can see I have already gotten some grass clippings and have distributed them around as well. I will work to get in my tomato plant stakes in the next week.

The middle of the garden is full of my low growers, onions, beets, kohlrabi, carrots, bush beans, and zucchini. I usually run into the problem later on of my monster zucchini plants taking over more than their fair share of the garden, but I will worry about that later.

The far end of the garden is where the sweet peppers will grow this year. If you noticed my fencing is far taller than in previous years. Last year deer jumped the outer fence then basically stepped over my short fence to gobble up as much of my garden as possible. Add to that a devastating hail and wind storm over the 4th of July and my garden had areas that never recovered. I am hoping to avoid that this year with a taller fence and will use some tarps if really bad weather is approaching.

One last change this year is to  spread out my cucumber plants, then train them to grow towards the fence eventually growing up the fence. I think that sometimes my plants are way too close together along the fence line so maybe this will help them grow.
Gardening is especially good for the soul during troubling times. So get out there and take advantage of some gardening therapy. Happy gardening!

Irish Lap Quilt

This is a lap quilt with an Irish theme for my mom. 

Baby quilt

This is a baby quilt I made for a friend's new grand baby on the way. 

In the Organic garden - Sprouting Pepper Seeds

Hello on this blustery snowy day in February! Obviously I am not in the garden, but I am getting ready for it. My pepper seeds have mostly sprouted!! Very exciting for such a winter day. I usually start seeds in small containers wrapped in plastic bags sitting on my warming mat. Before I had warming mats I just put them on top of the refrigerator until they sprouted, then over to the window sill. Once the true leaves have sprouted I will transplant them to a reusable cup that I have labeled and drilled holes in the bottom for drainage. I do need to be careful the containers don't dry out, so I keep a good eye on them daily, and water as needed, very gently. 

I also save my plastic bags. I just air them out until they are dry and then I save them with all my seed stuff until the seed sprouting. Tomato seeds will be planted about halfway or at the end of March. Peppers are easier, but tomato plants can be more of a challenge if I can't put them outside at some point in early spring. The plants may get a bit leggy but then I just bury more of the stem when I plant them, so it all works out. 

Happy planting!!

Krista

Potato, Lentil, and Lemon Soup

If you are looking for a new twist on potato soup, this may be the one for you. It is light and delicious! Just the nice hot soup for a cold day. I loosely based it on one I saw in a magazine that included some lemon juice. It was a really nice addition. I hope you try it.

Potato and Lentil Lemon Soup

1 cup lentils                         

8 cups vegetable broth

1 medium yellow onion          3 medium carrots

3 medium potatoes                 ½ cup fresh cilantro

1 bunch kale, chard, or collard     1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. ground pepper              1 T. minced garlic

1 tsp. ground coriander           1 lemon

(opt. ¼ tsp crushed red pepper)

* Place the cup of lentils in a pan with 3 cups of water. Bring

boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered for 30 minutes.

* While lentils cook, place vegetable broth in a large soup

pot, then add chopped potato, chopped collard or other greens,

diced onion, chopped carrots, salt, pepper, garlic, coriander,

red pepper desired, chopped cilantro, and the juice of 1

lemon.

* When lentils are finished cooking, add entire contents

with lentils to soup pot.

* Soup should be thoroughly cooked by now, but test to see if potatoes are soft to be sure. Serve hot.

* This soup freezes well.

Double Irish Chain Lap Quilt

Just finished a lap quilt for my mom. I will give it to her for Christmas. This is only the second time I have made the double Irish chain pattern. I really like the results.