What have you done today in the Garden?

Sjoerd, I have read about spraying both upper and under sides of veggie leaves and I do so with Brassicas. It's a bit more difficult with tomatoes and such. The garlic spray does seem to keep Cabbage loopers at bay. The Epsom salt spray seems to help beans, tomatoes, squash, etc. Thank you for telling me.
I tried red onions this year, but read that yellow onions do best in Michigan, so next year I will be planting only the yellow.
Good luck with the bee endeavor.

I've been doing mostly maintenance gardening. One thing which makes me happy, I took suckers from tomato plants. Three I soaked in a small pail of water with Miracle Gro until roots appeared. One I simply stuck in a pot of dirt. As I was placing the water-rooted suckers in the ground, I accidentally broke the stem between the root section and the first set of branches. Just as a trial, I wet a small piece of newspaper, gently wrapped the stem in it and placed it deep in the ground. Today it appears to be reviving. I love the fact that I can grow extra plants from the suckers which are best removed anyway.

 

After waiting for the worst of the temps and humidity to abate, I ripped out spent green beans and cucumbers and cleaned up the small bed they were in.
Plugged in 3 baby zucchini plants and a beefsteak tom, which I hope there is still time to harvest before summers end. About 2 or 3 days this week my son
and I have been trying to dig out huge root ball from a cactus that had been removed back in April. Hard to get the energy up to work in the heat. Have been
pulling my hair out over the gopher mounds, boy I hate them!

 

My dear son tilled the corn patch under and today I planted 7 double rows 60' long of greenbeans and 6 rows of beets, some zinnias and a row of mixed flower seeds. Maybe they will grow and bloom for my farmers markets in the Fall. I did a market, sprayed zucchini and cucumbers with neem and pyrethrum for mold and beetles. Did a few more things and now I am off to bed.

 

Nothing today because it rained all day and nothing else to do,

Yesterday I potted up a baby Basjoo pup (Banana)

 

Today? I checked for any possible damage after last night's wind and rain. None, thankfully. I tied up a few tomato branches which had escaped their cages. Dug out a few volunteer potatoes. They were tasty fried for lunch. Also pulled the hated Bind weed. UGGG.

 

I dug some potatoes and picked some of my first tomatoes.

 

We are so dry here that we had to water the potted plants this evening. Not that I needed another job to do in the end of the day....We may get a little rain over night but I can't chance it for some plants were wilting...the poor things.

 

Picking more toms this morning after it dries out a little. Going to make and can tomato juice. On my third day of cinnamon cucumbers. Tomorrow I will be canning them. Have a huge bunch of yard long beans to pick. Hope they can well.

 

Harvested more beans, courgettes and cues. The spider mite is in amongst the cucumber plants, so I misted them with water. I will do it again tomorrow until they have all left or drowned.

Pulled all the white onions out and draped them across the wood storage area to dry. The red ones have already dried and have been braided into a string.

Been checking on the bees and they are filling up more honey supers. I shall have to remove those soon and then start thinking about treating them for varroa mites.

Did a big digging and clean-up job along the fence between the neighbour lady and us. There were so many horse tail, bindweed and ground elder coming across into our flower garden that something had to be done. The woman is not a keen gardener and has let things go for several years now. This sort of behaviour really is irritating.
She also lifted up some of the border fencing between us and left it so that the rabbits could have just waltzed through into my garden easy as pie. It is a blessing that the woman is moving to another garden.

It is not all peaches and cream on the allotment complex.

 

Checked in on one of the bee hives. Chopped up more lavendel for my smoker. Harvested all the beetroot. processed bees' wax.

 

Harvested beans, courgettes and toms and processed them. All the beets are out of the ground and the plots have been worked and prepared for strawbs. I will go out into the polder next week and pick up my new plants. I shall take orders for some of the gardeners in our section. quite a few folks want to refresh their beds this year.
Tapped the very last of the honey into jars.Will process more honey in a week or two. That will be primarily from the Linden trees.

 

Sjoerd, your gardening sounds like a lot of work. I wish your neighbor-gardener would be a bit more thoughtful.
Just keeping up with what must be done is enough without thoughtless neighbors intruding weeds and rabbits.
Ah well, such is life, aye?
As I finish a section of the garden, I'm pulling out weeds, chopping up veggie matter as compost, covering with
either cardboard or the paper bags we use for leaves and grass clippings, watering well. Then I will add decomposed
material from the compost pile and top that with grass clippings or chopped leaves. I think it's called Lasagna beds.
Maybe?
I went outside before 8:00 this morning, supposedly for a few minutes, didn't put sunscreen on, came inside after 11:00 A.M.
So much for plans. When I'm in the garden, there are SO many things that MUST be done.

 

Boy GP--You have really been doing some work there. Hope that you didn't get too sunburned. Yes--C'est la vie.

Harvested courgettes. Ordered pizza at the lottie and four of us had a great afternoon and evening.

 

Sjoerd, I'm making up for it today by resting. All I did was pick 4 or 5 tomatoes, two Zucchini, and two yellow Squash.

 

Busy day in the gardens today! I haven't had time to work in the back flower beds all week, so today I deadheaded and weeded. Cut some grass and then spent an hour in the veggie patch. There were beans, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, cucamelons and zucchini to pick. Also had a few last peas to pick and the first 2 red beef steak tomatoes. Tomorrow I will do some canning!