Flowers Plus Garden Woes and Worries

Mom's Green Thumb!

This last picture if zoomed up on shows a very creepy little critter that had his lower body attached to the squash and was probably the same critter that decorated the squash with the fancy, curvy artwork.

I've been very interested in finding out about all the living organisms in the garden, but on several occasions I've been completely grossed out, and scared of what I might discover if I keep looking so closely. Sometimes I just want to turn a blind eye. I threw out one of our squash plants that wilted overnight, victim to a stem borer most likely. I'm seeing similar signs of damage on my other varieties of squash plants.

I have felt overwhelmed by all the rain we have been having. The garden is getting out of control. The plants that I want to grow such as the tomatoes are turning yellow, and the lower fruit on the pepper plants are starting to rot on the bottom. The only plants loving this much rain seem to be the weeds, of course.

I also pulled up the rest of our bean plants that were completely covered by the squash beetle larva. Everyone bragged about how pretty the first harvest of beans were, but the new beans were covered in holes and some were looking very rusty. I found a few good beans to save for a future meal. I'm actually happy to have an area of the garden cleared for a fall crop.

This is the time of the year that I get scared of plants dying before the veggies are ready to be harvested or that I will get so much stuff that I want be able to preserve it all, and I will end up wasting a ton of good food. I have one gardening friend that just got a dehydrator and we used it for making some dried tomatoes, which is a method I never tried before. I also need to find a good way of drying some of my herbs before they go to seed or die. I've tried drying basil several times but have had no luck. I should probably just make a lot of pesto to freeze and save.

Besides gardening tasks that need to be done I will be making blackberry jam with my grandma this Monday morning. We went to Crows Nest Farm to pick berries on Wed. It is amazing how much bigger the u-pick berries are compared to the wild ones I'm use to picking with grandma, and even weirder is that the plants have no thorns. I'm not complaining, but it makes me feel like I'm cheating.

I will also need to be picking and freezing corn this week. I will be eating some also, one of my favorite summer treats.