You are definitely THE Pepper Man!
2024 garden season
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@Mad Professor. The squash bugs are a different critter than the striped/spotted cucumber beetles. Both are hard on most curcubits.
These are the critters I'm fighting with.
They eat the leaves, the flowers, and even the baby squash.
I just came in from knocking them into a cup of soapy water, and snipping the ones that tried to crawl away.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't gotten so hot and dry, which stressed the plants.
I'm getting close to just pulling them all up... but it's supposed to rain in the next few days, so I'll wait a little longer.
These are the critters I'm fighting with.
They eat the leaves, the flowers, and even the baby squash.
View attachment 1204538
I just came in from knocking them into a cup of soapy water, and snipping the ones that tried to crawl away.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't gotten so hot and dry, which stressed the plants.
I'm getting close to just pulling them all up... but it's supposed to rain in the next few days, so I'll wait a little longer.
That's a squash bug. You can cut down on the population by smashing the eggs on the underside of the leaves like in your image.
I've been getting rid of the eggs, too.
In the fall they always show up. Thats a sign of early frost. They get on the pumpkins and squash to keep warm at night! Gottum here too!
Found a bunch of squash bug babies on an ear of field corn this morning. Got rid of a lot of them with my handy dandy Bic lighter.
Trying something new. I was able to get a big load of horse poop from a neighbor. Poop is about 2 years old, not fully composted, but It should work to fill my large pots. So yesterday after shoveling my pots full of the manure, I decided to plant a little garlic in the manure. Not sure how well that will work out, but I had two garlic bulbs I needed to do something with, the pots where ready, so what the heck. Normally, I would mix the manure with soil first, but I didnt have any decent soil available. What I plan on doing is dumping some good dirt on top and let the garlic grow thru it. I have had decent luck doing similar by planting in dirt and then top dressing with chickn poop, how well it will work planting in the horse poop and covering with dirt is a wait and see situation. I bought a few more garlic bulbs and one of those elephant garlic today. I'll plant them tomorrow. I would like to plant some carrots and other things, but there was 5 deer bedded down beside my pots last night. I need a cold snap to take care of those pesky deer.
Amazing!! Sue definitely has two green thumbs... the rest of your garden is gorgeous too.
Good to see you join in this thread.
Save some of those sunflower seeds!
Diatomaceous earth is great for killing insects that can hatch our of and eat stored seeds. Just put some DE in the seed storage container and roll it around ever now and then.
These are the critters I'm fighting with.
They eat the leaves, the flowers, and even the baby squash.
View attachment 1204538
I just came in from knocking them into a cup of soapy water, and snipping the ones that tried to crawl away.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't gotten so hot and dry, which stressed the plants.
I'm getting close to just pulling them all up... but it's supposed to rain in the next few days, so I'll wait a little longer.
I've got those but not as much as a problem/infestation as the cucumber beetles.
Those are doing great. I grow the giant variety too, hard to get full keeper heads as the birds are all over them.
Looking for a different variety of POLE bean to try. Currently, I'm planting Blue Lake Stringless Pole beans. Any suggestions?
I'll look through my stash and see what varieties I have left.
Kentucky Blue is highly rated.
A cross between Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake.
You may also like some of the Italian type pole beans.
Nope. All I have left are the Blue Lake bush beans.
I've given away all the pole beans already.
Hilda is the Italian pole bean that we like best and grow. We've been growing Hilda for about ten years and saving seed year to year.
The will grow right off the top of a ten foot trellis and then start growing back towards the ground.
We steam them in an Instant Pot. Absolutely no strings even when almost a foot long. A very heavy bearer.
https://www.vermontbean.com/product/V01193/204
Looks interesting. The flat pods would be great in stir fry like sugar pod peas. Easy to blanch and freeze too. Can you grow them on a trellis with another variety and not worry about cross pollination?
They need separated by at least 30ft I believe and even then bumble bees may cross pollenate them. They don't cross with lima beans. We grow a yellow cultivar too and I've had them cross but rarely and that was grown right next to each other. The gold ones are even more beautiful. There are other Italian pole beans that may be as good but we haven't tried them. They can extremely well and remain crispy. Our Instant Pot steams them to perfection. I've grown Rattle Snake pole beans but they are really stringy. This greatly increases snapping time. If you want to try 'Hilda' I'll send you 100 seeds, just private message me your address. Hilda will not live until frost kill so several plantings are needed if you want to grow them until frost. I'd space planting times maybe three weeks apart. If you wait until your first planting is in decline to plant a succession planting you likely will not get a second crop before frost kill.
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