the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

we were talking about what we wanted for lunch today and decided to run out and do a few errands and most importantly we also got some ice-cream at a real ice-cream store. it was the first decent butter pecan ice-cream i've had in a year or more.

we also thrift store shopped for some clothes and picked up four shirts and two pairs of shorts for us for less than $18.

then at another store i finally found an acceptable shovel. home in time for a late lunch and then i could do other things the rest of this afternoon while Mom siesta'd.

now i better get the beans prepped and cooked.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Sounds like a productive day!

 

[flowerbug]

my potted Fort Portal Jade bean plants gave me back seven beautiful seeds. an increase from four seeds that i started with. mainly this was an experiment to see if i could do it and it was ok, but not working nearly as well as it could have because the potting soil i used was recycled and it's pretty horrible stuff. it's not helped any garden i've mixed it in and they are all performing poorly compared to normal.

i may get some more seeds yet, so we'll see how it continues.

 

[flowerbug]

this mantis was on the eaves the other day, probably a male (very skinny) and very well hidden from a casual observer:

Fort Portal Jade beans. compared to what i've grown here in the past these near perfect beans are perfect. i only had four beans left and grew them in pots, two plants survived and one has completely finished by now, the other plant i'm not sure what's going to happen with it. still a nice increase so far from 4 seeds to 22 seeds. i probably will not be growing these again, but if i can clear up some table space by the only window i have here for growing something like this again i'll give it another try (with better potting soil).

 

[flowerbug]

the bean gardens as they were yesterday, the first picture is of the North Garden which has been repeatedly razed by deer. there's a few bean plants struggling along here or there but i don't know how much production i'll get from them.

this garden was planted after the above garden but you can see it hasn't been raiding nearly as much. you can see the Purple Dove beans in the foreground grow very well in comparison to most of the rest of the beans and also the further back you get in the garden the more deer grazing. the scarecrow is cheering them all on.

inside the fence where the beans are safe (and planted sooner) things are doing much better. a lot of flowering happening.

and the last two bean gardens to the south side of the fenced gardens. planted first and second. all sorts of flowering and pods in there.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Looks great! Except for the deer buffet, lol.

 

[flowerbug]

tomato patch is doing good this year

 

[flowerbug]

Looks great! Except for the deer buffet, lol.

no kiddin! lil boogers...

 

[flowerbug]

picked more tomato worms today. i wasn't going to look at first but on the way back from checking out the long bean garden (outside the fence) i decided to peek through the fence to see if there was any new chewing going on and i saw a worm right away so since i could actually tell where it was for a change i went in there and picked it off and smushed it.

nine worms for today. most were the medium sized ones like what i picked off before. a few were smaller and one was big.

last year it seemed like almost all the worms i found were on the bigger side (which means they'd done more damage before i found them).

for some reason they were active later today and right out where i could see them, perhaps the early fog changed their schedule.

plenty hot and humid out there already.

cleaned out the birdbaths and refilled them and that was it for today out there.

 

[flowerbug]

picked 23 more tomato worms this morning. considering over half the 16 plants didn't have any worms on them at all it was interesting...

in the past i've never found multiple worms on a single plant or at least i don't recall it being a common thing to happen - it always seemed as if there was turf wars over a plant and that only one worm was on the plant.

this morning i was looking at some plants where a single branch had three worms on it and there wasn't a single leaf left on that branch. also more unusual was the number of small tomatoes the worms were eating. in the past i'd had a tomato here or there with some chewing taken out of them, but not very many. i guess when you run out of leaves the small tomatoes are good enough...

then i picked some beans and weeded. nice day out there, wish my back could take more but i know when to quit when it starts acting up to give it a rest.

also picked some green peppers for tomorrow we can make some stuffed peppers.

as i was going into the fenced gardens this morning there was some gravel stirred up like some deer had been messing around in there and then i noticed that they had damaged the fence to the gardens where all the veggies are at. they've not damaged this fence before but at least they didn't knock it down completely (as then they'd have likely made a big mess in there trying to get back out again).