What did you do in the garden today?

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Do you eat leftover baked beans on bread with mayo for breakfast? I ask because it's as strange to me as peanut butter and radishes. Never woulda thought of that. Do the French Breakfast variety have a different flavor from what you get in the store?

No. But one of my favorite "odd mixes" is a dish of lima beans, stewed tomatoes, and a good sized dollop of cottage cheese. Makes a great meal.

Yup. Does sound like an odd mix but I’ve tried odd mixes before and been pleasantly surprised (sometimes not). Haha. I’m not real radish experienced ... is there something different about those?

Yes, FBR are much milder. Not to mention, they are longer. So, they are easier to slice into those little radish and PB "sandwiches". I don't like standard radish. They taste too much like a radish, and have a sharp bite to them.

I just thought of something. In my observation, a lot of animals and insects avoid or will die if eating chocolate because of it's toxicity. Especially, dark chocolate. So, it makes me wonder if cocoa might be useful in the garden if applied a certain way.

Case in point, I left brownies uncovered on the counter last night. We have a few kitchen ants every year. Some years, depending on the weather, we have lots. Lol! Anyway, the ants were having nothing to do with those brownies. Not even going near them.

I've heard bugs and other animals will be repelled by coffee grounds, and interestingly enough, coffee contains some of the same natural substances as cocoa. Big difference being, you can easily get cocoa in a fine powder, where as coffee is typically granular.

Anyone ever try cocoa instead of coffee grounds in the garden, and can share their observations?

Interesting observation re: cocoa. I recently read in an old issue of Organic Gardening that someone sprayed their basil with coffee to deter insects. I may try it on some of my potatoes, cukes and squash. I bring home about 2 qt. of coffee grounds from church every week. It would be super easy to dump those grounds in a bucket to make some weak coffee before dumping them in the compost or around my blueberries.
 
Sounds like a great idea. Think I’m gonna get on that now that this rain moved out! No gardening today it POURED all day. Well till about 6 and everything drained s bit and goat shelter flooded and water all at the bottom so cleaned all that and now they are cozy and happy. The goat and chicken run looked like 1/2 lake till the rain stopped and drained a little but still pretty bad. Roads back here that just reopened from flooding are now reflooded. I don’t know the last time we saw this much rain Week with no rain and only in the 70’s and 80’s rather than 90’s coming up!! Need to get bugs uc And get weeding done!
 
I don’t put mulch around those 3 plants anymore because I heard that gives the squash bug a favorite place to hide. They hide in the mulch. I noticed when I haven’t mulched around them it takes longer for the invasion to get to me. But it always comes I just have to do my best to hold it off
Baby peacocks sound adorable
 
And, I use the mulch in that situation to an advantage: I stick the hose down into the base of the plant, and let it rip. The squash bugs who have taken refuge in the mulch come boiling up out of the mulch, and climb the plants to get away from the flood. I leisurely pick them off one flooded plant while the hose is flooding the second plant. They get dropped into a can of soapy water. Several return trips to pick up stragglers, and repeat every few days resulted in dramatic decrease of squash bug population, and squash that grew like gang busters b/c of the extra water.

If there is no mulch, the bugs will simply hide out in the soil.

I got nothing done in the garden today, but I did finally figure out that my cantaloupes are producing all male flowers at the moment. I picked up some straw to go under all of my melons, cukes, and squashes.

Oh, but I did get to hold 2 baby peacocks today. They were so precious!

It's not uncommon for the first flush of blossoms on Cucurbits to be male. If first blooms are female, there will be no fruit set. Also, temperature can cause increased male blossom set. I think it was last summer that folks in my area had very poor set of female blossoms, most likely due to weather patterns.
 
That's a great idea with the mulch/hose, LG! I get coffee grounds from work and put it in the blueberries and around the vining plants. I think it helps.

Something is tearing up the blueberry leaves. I need to do something about it, but not sure what. It's been raining buckets here as well, and when it's not, it's in the mid-90s with 120% humidity. Blech.

The first set of my atomic grape tomatoes should be ripe this week. I hope they live up to the hype, they're really pretty.
 

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