July 5, 2015, Sky Pictures

I tried to get pictures of the hail, but by the time I got my phone to take the picture the hail had almost stopped and melted.

I got a picture of one lonely ball of hail.  Can you see it in the center of the picture.  It is smaller than most of the dry spots on the patio.

Well the sky is beautiful, so I'll take pictures of the sky instead.  This is toward the back left side of my yard.

Toward the back right side of the yard.  Can you see the bright red spot.  That is the light on the firetruck passing by.

 One more picture.

The last picture for today.

Pictures of the Rain on July 2, 1015

This is where my strawberries used to be until I moved them last year and this year.  Hubby tilled the hard ground so that we could scrape off a few inches and put new soil in there.  The tilled soil held the rain well and turned into a muddy mess.

            

 Straight out the family room window.

        

 To the left some.

 As far to the left as I could take a picture without going outside.

Looking out the Family room glass door.  This is part of the low area of the yard where a lot of the weeds were. I guess they will be back.

 Looking at that low area out one of the bedroom windows.

This is out the other bedroom window.  Too bad my barrels aren't hooked up to collect the rain.  I need rain gutters and the barrels linked together.  Did you know that it is ILLEGAL to collect rainwater in Nevada and most other states.  Does that make sense in the driest state in the Union.  Utah, the second driest state, is working on changing that policy.  California is making some changes too.

Same window as above.  Hubby came home and said that there was a river running through the gravel on the other side of the fence and out into the street.

 A flower bed full of water.

 Another bed with just a little.

I put a brick in the pond and brought it close to the house the day before this rain, because the wind was blowing it across the patio.  Since this has never been installed and I don't think it ever will be set up as a pond, the children have claimed it as their swimming pool.

Cabbage Heads, Spinach Seeds, Garlic, and Potatoes

Five of the six cabbages, I got from my neighbor that started them from seed, are doing great.

Here are two of them.  I planted onions around them, but that isn't keeping the cabbage loopers away.  You can see all the holes in the leaves.  I have been going to put tule around them for 2 weeks and still haven't done it.  Tule is like netting, but has smaller holes, is softer, and used for bridal wear.

For now it just came into my brain that I could cover them with the window screens.  I don't care if the onion tops are bent over.  I hate onions!

Here is the spinach that has gone to seed.  I think it is ready to have a paper bag placed over the seeds to save them.  The lettuce behind it will be going to seed soon.  I am out of seeds from both of these plants, so I let a lot of them go to seed.

The garlic is dying without going to flower.  I noted before that it was going great in the winter and then when we got the hot winter spell it started dying.  The ones I have dug are double bulbs/cloves.  You can see them HERE.  I think I will pull these up and plant lettuce and spinach here.  I will have to go buy some seeds this time.

Here is a garlic from last year that must not have grown and came up this year instead.  Can you see the bulge near the top of the plant?  That is the flower developing.  After it comes out and starts to open I will break it off, so that it puts the energy into the garlic bulb and not the flower.  If it is broken off too soon it will come back.

             

This years garlic is weird.  The red spot in the center of the left picture is something popping out of the stock.  The picture on the right has a bulge at the base of the stock.

Buckets in the Garden

A few days ago, June 17 actually, I saw the quail digging in my garden and posted pictures.  I also said that I would tell you about the buckets.  Well I am finally doing that today.

My cucumbers and gourds were planted almost the middle of May.  I went out of town for 8 days and when I came back nothing had germinated.  I thought was kind of strange.  I went to dig up the seeds and see if they had rotted or were still there doing nothing.  I dug and found no seeds.  After looking closely it a couple of hills where the seeds were planted I found that the hills had a hole in the center of them.  All the cucumber and gourd seeds were one.
After taking a week or more to decide what to do.  I finally decided to replant.  Thanks to my nephew I got the idea of putting the buckets with the bottoms cut off over the top of each of each hill.  He was shading his plants and I decided it would stop the seed thieves.

Here are the pepper plant that the pots were protecting when the quail came digging.  The pots are from the grocery store.  They are the ones that they get flowers in and display the fresh flowers in.  They were throwing a bunch out and Hubby got them for me.

Most of the cucumbers are doing great now that they spent time with the buckets protecting them.  The one in the center front died.  There is one still in a bucket that is smaller than the center back one.

A few of the gourds have germinated now, but at this rate winter will be here before they grow gourds.

I was given a couple of watermelon plants last week so the buckets are protecting them. I don't think they will get big enough to bear fruit before winter either.

Squash Bugs

Here is information on squash bugs and getting rid of them.

Here is a squash bug I found on the pumpkin plant growing in the compost bucket.  Squash bugs have a needle like mouth (like a mosquito) They suck the nutrients out of the plant.  They can suck it out of any part of the plant, but I find them mostly at the base of the plant.

This is what I use to pick them up with.  I'm not about to touch them, so I take Hubby's pliers and pick them off the plants.
This is actually squash bug number two.  I only found one easily, so after I eliminated the first one I pored a two gallon bucket full of water into the compost bucket with the pumpkin plant and three more raced up the vines.

Here are a group of squash bug eggs.  They are usually where the veins meet on the bottom side of the leaves.

I tried to smash them with the pliers, but didn't get them all.  For some reason I can uses my bare fingers to smash the eggs, but not the bugs no matter what their size.

Another leaf with more eggs.  If the leaf has clusters of eggs at every intersection of veins I will sometimes just cut the entire leaf off and toss it into the trash.

This dead leaf and stock were lying on the ground, but still attached to the plant. I just pulled the entire thing off.

Check everywhere that is out of sight, this part of the plant has another plant leaning against it, so the eggs were hidden.

This plants leans sideways in the pot and this side is against the soil.  Search everywhere and smash those eggs.

I did not find any baby squash bugs.

Now for other ways to get rid of squash bugs:

This is a cucumber plant.
I put copper around the base of the plants.  I got a long length of sticky backed copper from my dad.  It is about 30 years old.  There is no sticky left on it, but the paper is dried to the back. I have no idea where you would find something like this now, especially at the current price of copper.

Here is a Blue Hubbard squash plant.
As you can see I put the copper strips very close to the base of the plants.  For some reason squash bugs will not cross over the copper.
Before I got the copper I tried several rows of pennies around the base of the plant and that did nothing.  So if you use pennies you need a lot.  My copper strips are about 3" wide.

Diatomaceous Earth can be sprinkled on the ground where any pesky bugs are. Diatomaceous earth is made from the fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms.  It is very fine like a powder, but actually has sharp edges all around it.  It causes insects to dry out and die by absorbing the oils and fats from the cuticle of the insect's exoskeleton. Its sharp edges are abrasive, speeding up the process. It remains effective as long as it is kept dry and undisturbed.
I got the information on Diatomaceous earth  HERE if you want more detail about it.
Diatomaceous earth works best on soft bodied insects.  The babies are soft bodied, but they develop a hard shell as they turn into adults.

Duct tape made into a loop around your fingers with the sticky side out can be used to pick up a large group of baby squash bugs quickly.  It doesn't work as well on the eggs that are next to the veins on the leaves and it can also pull off a chunk of leaf.

Dawn dish detergent added to water can be used to spray the eggs and baby squash bugs.  In a two quart bottle put no more than 1/2 inch of dish soap and the rest of the bottle filled with water and spray until the eggs and babies are soaked.  Spray early in the morning or late in the evening.  If the leaves turn brown where they were sprayed it is, because it was too hot and the leaf burned or there is too much detergent in the bottle.

You can also put damp rolled up sections of newspaper next to the plants and they will go under or in the paper.  This works really good for earwigs.  They go in there when it is dark.  First thing in the morning you have to get outside, pick up the paper and throw it in the trash.  If you don't get outside early enough they will have all left the newspaper.  This is my least favorite non-chemical way.

Insecticidal soap can be sprayed on them.  This works best of soft bodied bugs too.  You can make your own insecticidal soap, but my understanding is that the harder your water is the less effective the soap will be.  Someone give it a try and let me know your results.

If you are really desperate and feel like they have gotten beyond your control you can use Sevin.  I personally do not use this product.  You must read the label very carefully.  Produce sprayed with this product have a minimum number of days you must wait after spraying before the produce can harvested.  That is creepy to me.  The product does work though.

The best and easiest way to get rid of squash bugs is by having toads.  The toads will eat them all.  To keep a toad or two around you must have a cool, dry, damp, dark place for them to go to at all times.

Weeding June 17, 2015 and Quail Pictures.

All this wonderful rain has make the weeds grow.

Picture number 1.   This is on the right side of the pile of rocks close to the garden.

Picture number 2.   This in on the left side of the rocks close to the grass.

This spot at the edge of the asparagus and parsley had turned into a never ending battle.  It is mostly grass that spreads from rhizomes under the ground.

Picture number 4.   Not so bad here.  I think this is a good place to start.

Another place that isn't so bad.  I need to take more pictures so you can see how large the area actually is.

I used the hula hoe on every part of the yard I weeded.  I'm thinking that is is the equivalent of vacuuming the carpets in my entire house with the nozzle used for cleaning cracks and crevices.

 

Got them all hoed out.  Well maybe not.  Looks like more right where the hula hoe marks are. The areas hoed with the shadow of the mail box and glass door is the lowest area in our yard, so the weeds there got extra water.

Well I got the ones in the picture above now.  All the weeds are raked into a pile.  Did I miss these or did they grow in just a few minutes.  Okay time to hula hoe again.  This is right in back of the trailer.

Okay.  Hoed and raked again.  Really there are more?  This is worse than vacuuming the entire house with the crack and crevice nozzle.

Well I guess the third time is a charm.  Here are the weeds and some rocks from the first two pictures.

They are even growing in the cracks of the patio.  Well these got sprayed with vinegar.

I went outside and took pictures of the weed areas showing larger views.

 Here is a larger view of the area from picture number 4.

This is from the fence to the trailer.  You can see the trailer wheels in some of the above pictures.  You can also see the edge of the blue barrel that is also in picture number four which is not the same blue barrels as in the above picture.  LOL. Are you confused yet?  Maybe Hubby will take a picture from the roof. A good aerial view would explain it all.

We should really move this trailer back to the corner it belongs. We parked it here on May 16. Actually I'm kind of liking it where it is.  Sometime between 5 and 6:30 every morning there has been a cat fight under or in front of the trailer for the last several months.  That is until we used the trailer and didn't put it back.  I don't know were they are fighting now, but I am thrilled not to have that as my alarm clock now.

 Here is a picture from the left side of the trailer.  You can really see the low spot now.

Can you see all the green spots.  This is just 9 days later.  I still haven't cleaned up other piles of weeds and rocks.  It looks like it is time to start again.

 Picture number 16.   Old dead weeds waiting to be cleaned up and lots of new green weeds growing.

 Another mess of dead weeds, rocks, grapevine pieces, and cat poop to clean up.

This area of new weeds is part of the area I cleaned to make the pile in picture number 16.  More weeds are here too.

So here is why I really went outside and took more pictures of the yard.  As I was posting pictures and writing I looked out the window into my garden and saw the quail at work.
Here they are.

They moved before I got the picture taken from the window.  You can see daddy at the corner of the bed with the gray bucket and the black bucket?

Cropped the picture.  Can you find mommy quail?

Cropped it again.  Can you see here now?  She is between the buckets under the screen.

See what she did?  The first hole is on the left front side of the black bucket.  She was just starting to scrape the ground on the back left side of the gray bucket when I went outside and scared them out of the garden.  I am holding the screen up to take this picture.  When that was done I shifted the buckets over the plants and placed the screen flat on the ground and up tight against the squash plant to make it fit.

Here is where they went when I came outside.  They casually walked away like they were on a stroll and not fleeing the scene of a destruction mission.  Hubby was hoping the bowl she made was to lay eggs in.
Oh no.  I'm glad they hide their eggs.  I would be giving them away as food.  I don't want more garden wreckers in training being flaunted before me.  LOL.


I'll tell you about the buckets in the next post.  Hopefully it will be this weekend.