One Of The Good Guys And A Couple Other Things.

Assassin Bug Hiding In Our Contorted Jujube Tree.

I spotted one of the good guys while I was out walking the garden this evening.  I have recently seen herds of baby grasshoppers and a few Japanese cucumber beetles so these guys are more than welcome. We started out the summer with lots of beneficial insects but over the last couple weeks they seem to be declining since the hot and dry weather has really set in.  So in turn, I have been planting lots of flowers in the areas where I can help it along with some irrigation.

Purple Tomatillos

This is a purple tomatillo that I planted from seed.  It’s the only one that made it through the hardening off and transplanting process.  Now I can tell you I have never eaten a tomatillo, let alone a purple one, but if this thing makes a tomatillo for every bloom on the bush I will be knee deep in them. It’s a real runner I tell ya, should I be tying it up or planting it next to a trellis in the future?

Birdhouse Gourds

We planted a couple birdhouse gourd vines, here are a couple of the gourds forming.  They really seem to love the heat we’ve been having, you can almost see the gourds swelling if you watch long enough.  So far, knock on wood, these are my only victory in the war against the dreaded squash bugs for this year.  I tell you, If I don’t come up with a good scheme for fighting them off without the use of  hazardous chemicals I may never  plant any kind of squash ever again.  What methods do you use to control squash bugs?

Cucumber, Watermelon, Asparagus Beans on a trellis.

This bed was really an afterthought but so far it has really excelled.  I buried an old kitchen sink, in another area, to use as a water feature mostly for bugs, lizards and amphibians to water from and I basically took the topsoil and grass from that hole and one little apple tree that I planted and turned  the sod root side up then covered it with newspaper and wood chip mulch to form a bit of a mound.  Then I set some T-posts and hung a chunk of field fence on it for the climbers to climb. So far it has watermelon, yard-long (asparagus) green beans, cucumbers a couple of tiny pepper plants and one stalk of okra growing in it.  You might notice the black pipe laying in the back ground, that is the irrigation line that we ran this evening so we won’t have to manually water this bed anymore.  It ought to really take off once that’s up and going.

This Angel Trumpet had to be staked up last year when we planted it. This year it was one of the last things to come up and boy howdy did it take off! It has absolutely been covered with blooms about all spring and so far this summer.  It’s sure a beautiful and another one that you can practically see growing especially when the flowers are opening.  They truly are fascinating, I would imagine hummingbirds would love them if they were open during daylight hours.  Who knows maybe they are still open early in the morning and the birds to get on them. I certainly wouldn’t know I’m never awake at dawn.

Well, that’s about all I got, take it easy.

Pa

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