Starting the New Year and My Ongoing Pest Problems

Saturday I inventoried all the food I had canned, and dried.  Sunday I inventoried the things I froze.  This inventory will help me decide what to plant this year.  I must say "THANK YOU" to my mom for canning beets, peaches, and spaghetti sauce and drying apples for me.  There was no fruit on my trees and I didn't get enough beets or tomatoes to can.
This year I know that I need to plant lots of cucumbers.  The pickles are getting low.
My seed catalogs are arriving in the mail and I am getting excited for a warm afternoon to start working in the garden.
I watered the garden December 27 and left it uncovered for two days.  There is enough spinach for a salad still growing.  I will harvest that and the beets this week, since it is supposed to be warm.  The beets are planted in the coolest raised bed in the garden and I want to get that bed prepared so I can get cabbage and  broccoli started there really soon.
I will get another bed or two prepared for lettuce, spinach, and peas this month too.
I keep having the feeling to start things earlier this year, so I will.  I can cover everything if needed.
Two years ago I started my lettuce and spinach in February.  Three years ago I started my lettuce, spinach, and peas in January.  Both of those years I had great crops.
I looked out into my backyard Wednesday morning and saw a rabbit sitting near the garden.  I had noticed in November that there were foot prints near my compost buckets, but I couldn't tell what they were and I wondered if something was living in my yard.  Well I guess a cottontail rabbit was.
I opened the gate and threw rocks near him, so he would head towards the gate.  He did.  He ran out my gate and under the neighbor's gate.
I scraped the driveway gravel so that it would meet the bottom edge of the gate.  I checked the fence between us and next door.  I had to fix the chicken wire in the back corner where it was pushed in.  I'm sure the rabbit could fit through that opening.
I moved the wood and rock that I had used to block the antelope squirrels from coming in behind the beehive, since it wasn't doing any good.  I ended up making a big mess instead of blocking out the critters.  The bees are all inside the hive, so it was a good time to clean.
I also found that the cat is back and has been for a while.  It has three new places it is going to the bathroom in my yard. One place is next to the fence where there isn't any tack strip.  That side of the yard was never a problem.  Thursday I got out the box of tack strip and now the fence has carpet tack strip on it except where the grapevine grows over the fence.  I need help to get it there, but I am hoping the cat doesn't decide he can climb up and down a grapevine to get into  my yard.  There is also a section of fence that backs the desert that doesn't have tack strip on it.  I don't expect him to show up from that direction.
I got the vinegar spray bottle out and sprayed all the dirt.  I've been so busy I can't believe it is already Monday.  I will get spraying again this evening and do that daily for a while. This time I hope the cat leaves for good.
Forgot to buy more tulle at the fabric store this morning.  I have enough to cover the frame on the bed while they are short, but I will need more to cover the plants as they grow.
I am going to keep the cabbage and broccoli covered with tulle from seed to harvest.  Hopefully that will help with the bug problem better.

September Garden Pictures Finally Posted

This working for a living is really interfering with my blogging fun.  LOL.  Here are some pictures I have wanted to post for a while.

The beets I harvested the day this picture was taken.  Notice the heart shaped one and the one with two tops.

My poor Big Max Pumpkin will never be big enough to carve.

The garlic is growing very well.  I later covered it with netting because the quail were digging their holes to sit in around it and dug some up.  Last week I found most of the garlic tops eaten to about 1/2 inch above the soil.  What I thought were chipmunks, and have since found out are Antelope squirrels, are eating them.  Now the netting is raised off of the ground so they can't eat any more garlic.

The grapes are getting ready to pick.  Picked the grapes the third week of October.  We made 20 quarts of juice out of approximately 65 pounds of grapes (stems included in weight).

The cool weather gave me the best crop of onions I have ever had. I was so proud of my big onions until:

My mom's onion was placed next to my onions.  We both grew Walla Walla onions.

A close up of mom's onion.  Five inches across.

My bell peppers are on the plant.  Mom's bell peppers are sitting in the pot.  Gardening in the high desert region of Nevada is a lot of work.

 The refrigerator drawer full of potatoes from Mom's garden.

A close up of the biggest one.  All of  my potatoes were tiny and most of the plants died.

New Garden Pictures

This is my Big Max pumpkin.  One of those that get 500 to 1,000 pounds if you live in the Midwest.  Mine is a whopping 4 inches long from stem to flower.  The leaves are bigger than the pumpkin.

The Brussels sprouts are forming along the main stock of the plant.  They are almost the size of a quarter.  This is supposed to be a 90 day crop.  The seedlings were planted outside on 3/22.  I don't think I will plant them next year.  I have other things I like better than this crop that has so far taken over 5 months to grow and still isn't ready to harvest.

This eggplant doesn't get enough sun.  Not expecting anything from it.  There isn't even any flowers starting.  Oh well it is a pretty plant in an otherwise empty pot.

The lettuce I planted about 3 weeks ago is doing really well.

The lettuce plant from the little barbecue is dead, but the seed didn't finish forming.  I half expected that because the lettuce didn't do well it that tiny container.  I think it got to hot and even in the shade it didn't do well.

I will save the seeds from this lettuce plant now.

 I stopped watering my zucchini from overhead and have been careful to not get the flowers wet also.  I have two zucchinis now.

This is the other zucchini growing straight up.  There is a little spaghetti squash on the ground below the zucchini.

Here are two spaghetti squash.  The cement block is 6 inches wide and 16 inches long almost.  They measure like a 2 x 4 piece of wood does.  Anyway you get an idea of their size.  The front ones is very scratched up for some unknown reason.  I hope they finish developing before the frost gets to them.

This Sugar Pie pumpkin is 3 inches long form stem to flower, but it is bigger around than the Big Max pumpkin.

I dug these tiny potatoes out of the rectangular tote of potatoes, because the plant was almost dead even though it didn't grow as big as it should have.  It never got big enough for the plant to flower.  I was surprised to see holes in the potatoes.  There were only 8 potatoes.  Two other smaller ones had these same holes. I put the potatoes on one of the concrete block after I dug each one up.  When I finished and was starting to pick up the potatoes, I saw tiny tiny ants crawling out of the holes.  I have never seen or heard of that before.

Beets at different sizes.  Some were planted a little over  3 weeks ago and some were planted almost 2 weeks ago.

 This is four tomatillo plants.  It looks like a jungle.

 There are tons of little green husks with the tomatillos developing inside them.

All the tomato plants in the pots look terrible.  Usually when plants die from the bottom up it means too much water or too dry between waterings.  I'm not sure which it is.  The plant water tester always reads that they have a ton of water, but when I put my fingers down in the soil it feels dry.

Not putting tomatoes in pots again.  Especially ones without holes in the bottom.  This is my first year of container gardening.  Not very happy with the tomato results.

Wandering onions AKA Egyptian onions and chives are planted under all of my fruit trees.  These smelly plants help keep the bugs away that like to overwinter in the ground and climb up the trees in the spring.

Close-up of the Wandering onions.  The new onion sets form on the top of the onion stalks.  They will dry up, fall off, and start growing again.  Some will get blown to other parts of the yard and start growing if they get enough water.

Here is a close-up of one of the Wandering onion plants.  One new onion has a cluster of new onions growing off of it.  This happens very often.  I have plenty to share if anyone wants some.

Here is what is left of the ones I dug up and dried two years ago.  As you can see I don't use many onions.  They are little and very mild.

This is one of two parsley plants that are in with the asparagus.  All of the asparagus died and was replanted 2 years ago.  Two parsley plants managed to find their way back.  I am letting them go to seed and spread throughout the asparagus again, hopefully.