What did you do in the garden today?

[ChocolateMouse]

Cap, for your tomatoes, you should get a soil PH test done. Soil that's too acidic and wet lets fungus thrive. You should also try spraying them down or dusting with baking soda. It helps kill the fungus.

https://www.planetnatural.com/pest-problem-solver/plant-disease/early-blight/
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/natural-remedies-tomato-blight-powdery-mildew-43797.html

We have all kinds of fungus problems around here. Our soil is very wet. Between this, pruning and calcium foliar sprays we keep it all under control but it's still tough.

I got a little sunburnt doing work yesterday. I put on sunblock but managed to miss a spot. Now the center of my back in a bright pink color, but only in about a 2"x5" patch. Ugh.

 

[lazy gardener]

I haven't seen even one snake since we bought our house (about 5 years ago). We do have garter snakes in MN, but haven't seen any here. Our dog is pretty good at catching anything inside the fencing. He has killed several rabbits and mice, and even a few rats from the field. He's a rescue mutt, but looks like he may have some Jack Russell in him - he's a great hunter!

My garter snakes seem to have disappeared over the past few years, but have made a dramatic come back in the past year or so. I've been stockpiling leaves (piled up garbage bags full). I also have a Hugelkulture mound that has plenty of inviting voids in it, a stone wall build over the last few years, and several slash piles that refuse to burn. All lovely snake habitat. Unfortunately, they appear to be great ground hog habitat as well.

My dog is supposed to be part JRT. But, she looks like a mini Dalmatian, and she occasionally bays like a hound.

So far the garden is growing and producing. Spider mites are on the cukes so will be spraying them and will hit one bed of tomatoes again. Cleared them on the other three beds of tomatoes with Malathion when the Pylorum and Soapshield didn't get them. I use Benomyl for fungus on tomatoes and squash....more natural is 1/2 c powdered milk and 4 tsp baking soda mixed with water in a sprayer with a tsp of blue Dawn per gallon of water.

I'm working on raising the height of the fences on my chicken pens and will be adding a span of 1" chicken wire across the tops of all pens since an owl has decided to make forays into the pens with shade cloth covers. It is 108 - 110 degrees heat factor the past few days so the work has been slow going. I'm using PVC pipe with fittings added to the tops of the T-posts to hang the 24 inch wide chicken wire and will figure out how to support the 6 foot wide stuff with wire or fencing poles.....

Should be getting a little chance of rain as the heat dome moves west of us...hopefully...our pastures and ponds need the rain. At least it will move the temperatures down to the 90s.

I've been falling asleep in the recliner each evening with a bowl of elderberries that I'm pulling off the umbrels to make jelly juice. The stems make the juice bitter so I take the time to pick each berry off .... I get so relaxed watching tv and cleaning the berries that I start snoozing.

Going out to tend the birds and work on the fencing. Need to let the ducks out into the garden again to help with the weeding.

Everyone have a great day!

Pylorum???? Did you mean Pyola? I used 3/4" electrical conduit to support my covering over the run. I used 2 x 4 fencing over the winter run, the snow falls through it with a bit of persuasion. Anything smaller would trap the snow and ice too well. So, I block the flock into that section of run for the winter, then put up bird netting over the rest of the run when i open it up for the summer.

I've read that you can freeze the elderberry umbels. Then, all you need to do to clean them is rap the bag on the counter, and you can pour the frozen berries out. I'm guessing you'd need some sort of sieve to separate the berries from the debris. My EB are blooming for the first time this year. I have 2 named cultivars, one of which is blooming, but also have 2 or 3 wild plants sprouting up here and there. My named plants have taken quite a hit from deer browsing, and one of them is just plain slow getting established. I'm guessing it doesn't like it's location.

 

[Lazy Farmer]

like to plant cheap, untreated wild bird seed mix. A variety of plants comes up and the cats and dogs in your life will like the greens that come up as well as your chickens

I have jungles under my wild bird feeders.. Lol

 

[Lazy Farmer]

un. I used 2 x 4 fencing over the winter run, the snow falls through it with a bit of persuasion. Anything smaller would trap the snow and ice too well

I am so glad we don't have to use words like "snow load" in our vocabulary down here! Although I wish I didn't get carpal tunnel syndrome from dumping out my rain gauge either!

 

[CapricornFarm]

I started using liqued copper fungicide on our tomatoes after losing a whole crop to late blight yrs ago. I usually only have to apply it a few times unless we're getting tons of rain.
Home Depot has it.
Edited to add pic,
View attachment 1091766
If you want to give it a try I recommend getting the southern ag stuff it's concentrated, enough for 50gals I think. The ready to spray stuff is a ripoff $$ and won't go far if you have a lot of big plants.
I use a pump sprayer, easy to apply fine mist covering tops and bottoms of leaves. Comes in handy also for applying organic thuricide to kill cabbage loopers on broccoli cauliflower cabbage kale etc.

Thanks, i only have 4 plants but want more next year.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Cap, for your tomatoes, you should get a soil PH test done. Soil that's too acidic and wet lets fungus thrive. You should also try spraying them down or dusting with baking soda. It helps kill the fungus.

https://www.planetnatural.com/pest-problem-solver/plant-disease/early-blight/
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/natural-remedies-tomato-blight-powdery-mildew-43797.html

We have all kinds of fungus problems around here. Our soil is very wet. Between this, pruning and calcium foliar sprays we keep it all under control but it's still tough.

I got a little sunburnt doing work yesterday. I put on sunblock but managed to miss a spot. Now the center of my back in a bright pink color, but only in about a 2"x5" patch. Ugh.

Thanks, hope i can save them. Do you have aloe for the burn?

 

[black_dove2]

Lazy, you've got groundhogs? Just get yerself a husky. View attachment 1091257
That's just a baby one... But she did take out two that size in a week and attacked mama (but it got away). Haven't seen any since.

She'd prolly eat the snake too... But maybe not. Snakes move funny.

I love dogs and when they think they did their job they are very happy.

I have a cocker spaniel Betsy that worries me when she attacks centipedes like a mongoose on a cobra. I always thought they're poisonous with a painful bite. But she handles it well until I can get it away from her. The Xolo Brandi attacks the big red harvest ants and eats them. She's figured out how to do it without getting stung.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Raining. Got a weather alert on my phone and ran around covering painted boards. Sigh.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Cap, I have faith in you and your tomates. Tomatoes are very resilient. And yep, got aloe with lidocaine. I've got a skin tone that, despite consistent sun exposure, is frequently described as "blinding". I'm the whitest whitey who ever whited. No matter how much care I take I burn ever year. It's just a hazard of being me. So aloe gel is an essential part of my cabinet.
Fun fact, lidocaine (frequently in aloe gel) is also one of the few topical or local anesthetics safe for rabbits, so I keep it around for the bunnies too.

Dove, my husky loves hunting. It IS her job on this farmy. In the spring she took out a bird, a wild rabbit, a squirrel, and two groundhogs that were in the garden eating down my peppers and peas and lettuce. Then, more recently, she's been rat hunting. Last night she nearly got to give the shakedown to a raccoon that was IN my rabbit cages. It got away before she made it over. Last winter she started staring at the chicken pen and refused to move when I went to lock the hens up. I thought it was strange so let her in and she dragged a HUGE possum out from under the chicken coop, very much still alive just playing dead. She's also gotten very good at not getting hurt since the time she got bit up by the mama groundhog last year. Not a scratch on her since, not even in repeat matches against mama groundhog.
She's a good dog, too. Used to hunt the chickens. Now I'm getting ready to declare her "chicken safe". She doesn't even look at them twice anymore. She's much more interested in hunting rats and mice and things that eat the chickens. She's got her priorities in order.

Today in the garden I staked up more tomatoes. I put in about 10 6' tall stakes and tied the plants to them. I also trained my squashes a little more and watered the whole garden. It's the first day in weeks above 80 and the plants were wilting from it. My mystery cucurbits are starting to look more and more like melons or cucumbers. They are not squash. The flowers are not big enough. They could also be some sort of bizzare hybrid of who knows what. Care to place bets? I have 20 KY wonder pole bean seeds on it being pure heirloom cantaloupes!
I also had one of my corn plants get knocked over by my winter squashes and it died. But I did get one sad looking not well covered ear off of it. This is a HUGE triumph for me though! Last year I got ONE corn plant to grow and it gave me 12 sad kernels and that was the first time I ever got corn to fruit. This one has around 30 kernels, they're beautiful looking, and it's just one ear from one plant! The rest seem to be going strong still!

My zucchinis are starting to zucchini at LONG last! Last year the biggest zucchini I harvested ended up being 7lbs 10 oz... That would have been a week ago last year. This year I intend to pick most of them much smaller than that. I will probably still grow some of them out big, however, and I want to get at least one that gets big enough to save a host of seeds from!

 

[CapricornFarm]

Considering getting a LSG dog when I get the goats but not sure DH would ok it for 6 goats. Just found out there are lots of coyotes here. Have not seen or heard them but I mostly stay in at night and Windows are closed. Snacking on radishes (not mine, they are bug chewed), and relaxing for once.