What did you do in the garden today?

[BullChick]

Growing cabbage, I went through a lot of sevin dust. Of course, that’s because I HATE slugs.

 

[igorsMistress]

Good afternoon gardeners. The bunny yard is done enough that they moved outside today. They have been exploring all afternoon. That’s pretty much all I did outside today other take the dogs for a walk. I’m taking a break for a bit before I start to clean up the mess in their old pen. Tomorrow the plants move and I get the starts going. Have a great day all.

 

[Acre4Me]

I learned something today, and feel a but dumb for not knowing it. Cabbage loopers are "inchworms." We always called them incheworms here and I kept wondering what a cabbage looper was. I decided to google that today... duh!

Anyway, they are not all that common here according to the University of Illinois extention site. Hoping that's good news for the cabbage I'm intending to plant this year. I didn't see any on the brussels last year and they apparently enjoy those too. I actually only recall seeing them a few times in my life here.

We have a population of them here! They also like mustards. Annoying bugs. They stay around ALL season. Even flying around in Oct when it is warm enough. I planted the rutabaga in the spring, after frost and they grew, but eventually the loopers were too much. So I planted more in July, and those did much better even with some looper attention. But Bt spray takes care of them.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

We have a population of them here! They also like mustards. Annoying bugs. They stay around ALL season. Even flying around in Oct when it is warm enough. I planted the rutabaga in the spring, after frost and they grew, but eventually the loopers were too much. So I planted more in July, and those did much better even with some looper attention. But Bt spray takes care of them.

Bt spray? What is that?

 

[Acre4Me]

Bt spray? What is that?

B for genus Bacillus. t for the species name (sorry, not near my bottle of it). It is often sold as “caterpillar spray”. When the caterpillar eats this bacterium it can’t eat anymore and dies. Doesn’t harm anything else. Does not affect the adult moths. It works well. Biggest issue is getting g it to stay on the leaves bc brassica leaves tend to have water just roll off.

 

[TJAnonymous]

Oh, my aching back....

I think I've mentioned before that they built a medical clinic next door to my house. They put up a 6 ft privacy fence (which is still too short to block the view) but left about a 2 ft gap between their fence and mine. You can see it here at the start of spring last year...

I TRIED to seed some FAREWELL TO SPRING flowers back there but the weeds and grass simply took over and went out of control! It was a jungle! And I spent a ridiculous amount of time and effort trying to keep it from spilling over into my plants on my side of the fence....

So this year I'm planning ahead. I just spent 4 hours of back breaking work trying to clear out the dead scrub in that area. I cut up some empty feed bags to lay down like landscaping fabric. Then DH and I are going to the quarry to pick up a truckload of stone to shovel back there. I'm hoping this will solve the overgrowth problem!

I got about 80% of it cleared and the fabric pinned down. Hoping it stays near 50 degrees this week so I can finish it up before it gets too cold.... I'd like to get it in while the grass & weeds are still dormant.

But, ugh.... My back is killing me from being bent over for 4 hours!

 

[Dinogrrl]

We had a good storm come through this past weekend and it knocked down the leyland cypress I was suspecting would be the next to go. Sadly, it fell right on top of one of my crepe myrtles and totally smashed and uprooted it . Once I get the area cleaned up I may plant a butterfly bush there, I've already got one and I love it.

The cypress came within a foot of hitting my baby crow egg apple tree. Oh I would have been mad if the apple tree had gotten crushed.

Anyway while my dad was out cutting up the fallen trees so I can get them to the curb for pickup (my rooster was Very Upset that the chainsaw was louder than him), I went out and cleaned up my garden. Pulled down the tomato and cantaloupe vines and cleared out what dead stuff I could without my clippers. My catnip has, of course, done quite well for itself. The rosemary is doing fine, the thyme is doing okay where it's hiding under the catnip, and the lemon verbena is like a bajillion feet tall. Looks like my lavender died, again. I have no luck with lavender. Also I can't tell if the peppermint made it, and the hybrid basil is likewise questionable. I'll have to wait until the spring to see what survived.

Next step, once it warms up again, is to trim back the catnip to something reasonable.

 

[Fishychix]

Just venting, so please scroll past because I have nothing about the garden, I just had a really extremely crappy day.

My car is still stranded on Vashon Island after last week's snowstorm, so today we got up really early to go get it. Drove an hour to catch the early ferry, only to be told by the worker in the ticket booth, "no boats" due to worker shortage from covid. She said there might be an afternoon shift, come back at 1:40. So we thought, let's not drive home, let's walk around the park and maybe visit the zoo, that'll kill 5 hours and be fun.

After walking a couple miles and visiting some gardens that would be beautiful at some other time of year, the sole on my old but barely-used hiking boots fell off. Slipping and sliding with one leg shorter than the other, we gave up on the walk, made our way back to the car, drove home, and I changed into different footwear, then we headed back to catch the afternoon ferry. only to run into a road closure.

We bumbled through the city as well we could, through unfamiliar streets, jerk tailgaters and inopportune train crossings, only to find out the ferries were cancelled for the rest of the day.

All we could do was go back home, but I figured we could stop by the store (part of the company where we both work) and maybe resuscitate part of the wasted day by getting the faulty hiking boots returned or replaced.

Huge fail! As soon as the manager found out we worked for the DC, he became really condescending. I wanted him to look up the SKU of the boots and see if there was a recall due to faulty construction, but all he did was look up my personal purchase history and said, "I can't find any record of you buying these boots." I asked him, "can't you just scan the UPC on this tag and get the SKU?" and he smirked, "that's not how this works," I was tempted to tell him, let me come over to your side of the counter and I'll show you how to make it work, but figured this wouldn't help my cause at all. After realizing I wasn't going to get any positive results, I asked him, "could you at least dispose of these, since you have a way to recycle them and I don't?" And he said, "We don't do that - dispose of them yourself." So we walked out, and he yelled after me loudly, " You should know better than this!" I muttered "F U" under my breath, with a mask, and was perfectly courteous to the young man at the exit, wishing him a good day as well.

Now I'm all paranoid that Mr. Condescending might have called Human Resources to try to get me fired for attempting to "scam the company," which is not true at all. At least I have proof I bought the boots from my company (the brand name is on them, and I have a witness who saw me pick them up) and I took photos of the faulty soles. Plus, if he really believed I was a scammer, he wouldn't have told me to dispose of the boots myself, would he? He would have insisted on taking them, to prevent me or some random dumpster diver from taking them to a different store to reattempt the scam. In fact, this is what Loss Prevention tells store salespeople to do. So he can go fudge himself.

Then when we finally got home, after a whole day of achieving nothing, we got a text that our late dog Lily's ashes were ready to be picked up. The cremation place did a really nice job, a wooden urn with her name engraved, a clay oval with her paw print, and a little sample of her hair.

The only thing keeping me happy today:

 

[TJAnonymous]

We had a good storm come through this past weekend and it knocked down the leyland cypress I was suspecting would be the next to go. Sadly, it fell right on top of one of my crepe myrtles and totally smashed and uprooted it . Once I get the area cleaned up I may plant a butterfly bush there, I've already got one and I love it.

The cypress came within a foot of hitting my baby crow egg apple tree. Oh I would have been mad if the apple tree had gotten crushed.

Anyway while my dad was out cutting up the fallen trees so I can get them to the curb for pickup (my rooster was Very Upset that the chainsaw was louder than him), I went out and cleaned up my garden. Pulled down the tomato and cantaloupe vines and cleared out what dead stuff I could without my clippers. My catnip has, of course, done quite well for itself. The rosemary is doing fine, the thyme is doing okay where it's hiding under the catnip, and the lemon verbena is like a bajillion feet tall. Looks like my lavender died, again. I have no luck with lavender. Also I can't tell if the peppermint made it, and the hybrid basil is likewise questionable. I'll have to wait until the spring to see what survived.

Next step, once it warms up again, is to trim back the catnip to something reasonable.

I have the same trouble with lavender. It hates me....

 

[WthrLady]

I think there are lots of caterpillars that fall into the looper category.
We had them on pine trees and they glowed in the dark.