The July Garden: A Saga of Weeds, Bugs, Drought and a Mystery

 

If I had to title this post a week ago, I would have titled it "A Garden of Death". I was feeling that fed up with the weeds, the bugs, the unrelenting heat, and the need to water these beds while fighting an assault of gnats. I feel a little differently about the garden this week. 

The first encouragement came in the form of rain, five days of it. The softened earth enabled me to start getting the weeds up. The plants responded to nature's watering much better than to that of hose water and more produce began ripening for us to use. The ripe tomatoes went into wonderful Panzanella salads and BLT's , we ate freshly cooked beets and green beans, and put fresh basil on everything. I canned salsa and sweet pickle relish and I am getting ready to can jalapeno peach jam. (Steve grows the jalapenos and the peaches are local from Ikenberry's.)

The downside of the garden mainly consist of two things that irk me the most: the weeds that grow in the gravel surrounding the beds and the worms and bugs that destroy the produce. I try to pull the weeds by hand since they are growing around a food source. The weeds are relentless! They consist mainly of purslane, spurge, and oxalis. The purslane and spurge are the worst and HATE them.The only thing I can do is pull and pull and pull. The main pests right now are the tomato horn worms, Japanese beetles, and some invisible bug that makes a perfect hole in the tomato. The worms are camouflaged  by day and easier to hunt after dark by using a black light flashlight. The black light makes the worms glow brighter than the leaves, hence making them easier to spot and pick off. The Japanese beetle population has been reduced by hanging those beetle bag traps a short distance away from the garden. They really work! I did discover one surprise about the bags, though. We had one bag hanging rather low to the ground and some animal came along and bit the bottom of the bag open. I guess it wanted to eat the bugs that were inside. Sigh. We can only keep trying.

Our current dilemma is trying to figure out what is taking bites out of the tomatoes. The round holes are clearly worm or bug made, but we also have nibbles with bite marks made by something with teeth. The garden is surrounded by electric fence for larger animals so it must be something smaller. The bitten tomatoes seem too high up for a rabbit. We have set the game camera out for two nights and spotted nothing on it. Maybe mice climb up to the tomatoes? Do mice even want tomatoes? Whatever it is is very sneaky. I try to pick the tomatoes at first blush but the bites are showing up on green tomatoes, not ripe ones. We may never solve the mystery and by next year's garden, I will have forgotten all about them.

Even though the garden is aggravating, the reward of having pretty jars of preserved goodies and fresh produce on our plates has begun to bring some immediate gratification. Cost wise, growing and preserving from seven raised beds is way more costly than buying the items off the shelf. Not to mention the labor effort, especially of pulling weeds. I really don't know why we do it other than that we always have.  I also have a short memory of all the bad things in gardening. During the winter I will romanticize our lovely garden and start dreaming of what to plant and how lovely it will all be. It will be just like the photos in the plant catalog. I am so gullible when it comes to dreamy, beautiful photos.

In retrospect, it boils down to one thing that keeps us gardening- the salsa. Steve is like a little kid with  his hot pepper powders, sauces, and salsa. He eats salsa or hot pepper sauce or jarred peppers of some sort almost every day. He puts them on everything. Seeing him so happy with such a simple thing makes me willing to do it all over again next year.