In the Organic Garden: The War on Squash Borers; Round two

On to round two. The seeds sprouted so I cut a piece of floating row cover in about a 3 inch wide strip across the top of the fabric like floating row cover material.

 I cut a length of that piece I would say around 18 inches long, bunching and tucking it inside the cup rim around the stem of the plant. The first cup had both seeds sprout so that was a little trickier, but I made sure to tuck in between the stems to make sure all the soil was covered. 

In the past few days I finally planted my winter squash seeds. I used old yogurt, cottage cheese, and a tub from salad greens to box in my seeds this time, again cutting the bottom off just like the cups. I used floating row cover to cover the top this time and poked some air holes with the skewer again. 

On a side note, I always collar my newly planted tomatoes with paper, and am doing the same for my peppers this year in an effort to hopefully avoid those nasty borers as well. 

Good luck and I will update as the season rolls along. I would love to hear if you are trying this too and how it goes for you. Happy planting! 

 

In The Organic Garden: The War on Squash Borers

Last summer I saw borers in places I have never seen them before! I live in Zone 4 near the Minneapolis area. This year I have decided to wage a kind of war on the borer. And by war, I mean try to prevent the bugs from laying their eggs in the soil near my plants so that when they hatch the borers are no where near my vines to bore into. 

To the left you see what the adult egg laying vine borer bugs look like. To read more information about them you can go to this web page  https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/squash-vine-borers                                                                                                The bugs are about a half inch long.                                                               

To start my quest I took two 18 oz Solo cups and cut off the bottom of the cup just below the first "o". You can see the mark on the cup where I cut. 

Here you see the cut cup. I used a sharp knife but scissors will probably work too.

Next I took a clear plastic bread bag and cut squares out of it big enough to cover the cup, then used a rubber band to secure it to the top of the cup. I then used a wooden skewer to poke some holes in the plastic. The holes are very small, just large enough to let in some air but way too small for the squash borer adult bugs to get into the cup.  

I prepped my soil by turning it over then added my organic fertilizer with egg shells and potash. I have a small garden so I only have room to make 2 wells for planting. 

At the bottom of each well I placed 2 zucchini seeds. I want one to sprout so I usually plant 2 seeds. The seeds are close enough to fit into the size of the cup. 

After I poked the seeds into the soil I watered them in, then pressed each cup over the seed area in the wells. 

Since our weather was unusually warm the seeds sprouted very quickly, it took just a few days. ( I checked them daily ) After I removed the plastic I immediately packed in grass clippings to cover the soil. If you don't have grass clippings, pack something around the sprouts so no soil is exposed.  I will also check this daily. After both areas around the sprouts were covered I covered the entire area with grass clippings. The clippings will hopefully deter the bugs from laying eggs anywhere near the plants, but if they do hopefully the young borers will just bump into the outside of the cup and won't find the young vine. 

I thought about a platform to keep the plants off the ground but ultimately decided to put some large tomato cages around the seedling areas. My thought is to contain the zucchini plants and keep the vines off the ground as they grow. 

That is as far as this journey is right now. If you are trying this or something else like this in your own garden I would love to hear how it is going. I will post an update as the summer progresses. 

Happy planting!

 

Quilts for Mom

 This quilting project was in memoriam of my mom. The middle area of each quilt was made out of 9 patch blocks. In the middle of each 9 patch is a large square. Those large squares were cut from 2 articles of my moms clothing. The fuchsia/orange squares came from a floral jacket she used to wear that really looked great on her. The khaki squares came from a pair of pants she wore to work at Target. She really loved working there for 25 years. The other pieces of fabric came from fabrics my mom had in her stash of fabrics. I bet she would never have guessed this is what that fabric would be used for. I made one lap quilt for each of my siblings and one for myself for a total of 8 quilts. It took me a while to finish all of them, but I am happy I made them. 

I forgot to take a pic of this one before I sent it out. 

 

Lentil Soup with Potatoes

 I ordered some lentils from Rancho Gordo and couldn't wait to put them in a soup. I also was able to use some of the purple carrots I grew this summer in the soup as the lentils were the Black Caviar Lentils (they only look small and black but don't taste or have anything to do with fish!). You can see the color tinge the carrots gave the soup. The soup turned out great! It is very hardy and would lend itself well if you wanted to add some sort of meat to your soup. I used the Rancho Gordo lentils, but you can use any lentils you have. I hope you try it!

 

Lentil and Potato Soup

1 cup Rancho Gordo Black Caviar Lentils (or any lentil you have)

2 tsp. minced garlic

½ cup yellow onion diced

2 large potatoes, peeled & diced

2 large carrots, peeled & chopped

1 large stalk celery, chopped

1 bunch kale, chopped

8 cups of water

3 T. vegetable bullion

¼ tsp ground red pepper

1 bay leaf

¼ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. dried cilantro

1 tsp. salt

* Place water, bullion, and bay leaf in large soup pot.

* Add lentils, potatoes, garlic, onion, carrot, celery & kale.

* Bring to a boil, then simmer.

* Add red and black pepper, cumin, cilantro, & salt.

* Simmer 30 to 60 min.

Quilted Stockings & Tree Skirts

 This project started with a request for quilted stockings that were all different. I quickly found out it was easier to make a pattern design instead of a block design. After the stockings were complete I volunteered to make a tree skirt. I searched around the internet and saw this design that looked like a lot of fun to try. When I read the instructions it turned out you really cut two skirts at the same time so I decided to make one for my son and one for my niece. 

This is the skirt that I made for my son.

This is the opposite cut skirt I made for my niece. 

I loved the way they turned out! 

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!