Seedlings are hatching

It looks like some of the seeds that I started last week have already germinated. Fall garden here I come. 

Stink Bugs and Squash Beetles

I kept thinking that I had escaped the risk of having a pest attack on my tomatoes and squash plants. I was very wrong. This morning while out watering and checking to see if my summer bearing tomatoes had finally ripened I saw them. Stink bugs crawling on the fruit of my tomato plants and squash bugs on my patty pan squash. So what are my options right now? Really their are only two that I am considering for this season. Option 1 is to hand pick all the mature bugs that I can find. 2 Neem oil. It seems like a combination of both will work best. Picking off the bugs I can find will hopefully limit the immediate damage that is done to the fruit already on the vine. The application of Neem Oil should help limit problems with future bugs that hatch later. I just need to wait for the local feed store to open up tomorrow and the required oil will be in hand.

My squash is so covered in bug eggs

The blackberry bush

So my dad gave me some bare root stem clipping from one of his blackberry plants that he chopped down. I figured why not plant it and see what happens. Well it's going pretty damn good. 

This is the "plant" about 3 weeks after putting it into the backyard. As you can tell from the bottom of the picture there are some brand new buds growing. So I'm hoping next year I'll end up with a little crop of blackberries. This is really great especially because I transplanted this way out of season. 

Happy Independence Day

Today is the 4th of July which of course means we celebrate our independence from Britain 240 years ago today. To celebrate I did what most of us do. I cooked out. I hope you all remember the real reason for the is holiday, and enjoy our freedoms while we can. 

Plant updates

So I took my pitiful looking tomato plants out of raised bed number one and transplanted them about a month ago... which turned out to be a great idea. I moved them to a bed that had been sitting for a while and was left unkempt by the previous owners.

One of the old beds. 

What I did in the way of prep was really just scrape the old weeds and weed barrier plastic up and plant the two new plants. These are them below. The picture is obviously not from the day of. I'd say it is from maybe 2 or 3 weeks post transplant.

Same bed with a second planting of tomatoes 

 I would say about two weeks after that my initial planting of tomatoes from the raised bed decided they didn't like their home. Lucky for both them and me I had a new home available for them.

These are the transplanted plants. Probably less than one week post transplant.

The plants initially struggled but I kept them watered pretty regularly for the first week or so. I also supplied them with some mulch. Admittedly I haven't put anywhere near enough down yet but I had all my old tree branched chipped by the city (a service they provide free once a month) so those wood chips will soon become mulch and compost fodder. I will probably add another much more current pic tomorrow to show all the marvelous new growth.

Plumbing.

Well my water no longer tastes like 60'year old rust. Of course getting there wasn't easy. To save money we did all the work, digging included by hand. We got the basic outline and planned route of is our new pipes laid out on the first day. Aside from one portion of gravel this was the easy day.

The new shed

This thing is pretty legit. It is definitely a vast improvement over my old one that was dilapidated and falling over. That thing has been around for I don't know how long.  All I need to do with it is get organized so I can fit more tools in there.

2 thousand-ish is not bad for a good working shed that I don't have to bend over in. I'll post some interior shots eventually. The old shed is still standing for the time being.