The eggplant didn’t make it.
And it doesn’t look like the plant’s going to make it either; not because of the potato beetles but because the doggone zucchini is just completely taking it over. This happened last year too, with a different plant choking out the eggplant (I can’t remember offhand what).
I think it’s time to put my eggplant seedlings in big pots on the deck and hope for the best.
Here’s my first yellow squash on the deck! I had my first zucchini for dinner last night. It was beautiful and great.
Herbs are going well.
And now for the dire news…
This past Monday evening – without notice – our County began its mosquito control program, which consisted of driving a pickup truck through our neighborhood spraying permethrin from a tank in the pickup bed. This noxious cloud drifts out over everything, including the garden! I was both hysterical and heartbroken. They didn’t do this last year. My husband was a little quicker-thinking. While I was inside have a breakdown, he was outside pulling plastic over the garden. He didn’t have enough to cover more than half. And because our garden is behind a privacy fence on all sides and set back some few hundred feet from the source of the spray, and protected by trees on one side, its likely that the damage was minimal, but I don’t want anything sprayed on my food!
I scrubbed the heck out of everything that I harvested today, and threw away the beet greens – what a shame. The only comfort is that if they did get hit, that there is still probably substantially less residue on them then on commercially-produced agriculture, where the pesticides are sprayed deliberately right on the plants, so we’re still better off. I have since checked out neighboring counties here, as we’re thinking of moving in the next year or so, and it seems all the counties around here do this. It makes me very angry and frustrated and helpless that someone can come through spraying pesticides that will contaminate my garden.
I called the County Mosquito Control Program Tuesday morning and had our address placed on the “objection list”, which means that they supposedly won’t spray at my address, but as I live in a neighborhood with houses not too far from me it’s hard to see how much good that’s going to do. So between now and this coming Monday evening (they will be doing this weekly through September) we are going to have to figure out how to cover this 800 square foot space, and covering the garden will have to be our regular Monday evening chore.
I’ll keep you posted on what we come up with.
Here’s my first yellow squash on the deck! I had my first zucchini for dinner last night. It was beautiful and great.
Herbs are going well.
The potato plants are getting HUGE.
And now for the dire news…
This past Monday evening – without notice – our County began its mosquito control program, which consisted of driving a pickup truck through our neighborhood spraying permethrin from a tank in the pickup bed. This noxious cloud drifts out over everything, including the garden! I was both hysterical and heartbroken. They didn’t do this last year. My husband was a little quicker-thinking. While I was inside have a breakdown, he was outside pulling plastic over the garden. He didn’t have enough to cover more than half. And because our garden is behind a privacy fence on all sides and set back some few hundred feet from the source of the spray, and protected by trees on one side, its likely that the damage was minimal, but I don’t want anything sprayed on my food!
I scrubbed the heck out of everything that I harvested today, and threw away the beet greens – what a shame. The only comfort is that if they did get hit, that there is still probably substantially less residue on them then on commercially-produced agriculture, where the pesticides are sprayed deliberately right on the plants, so we’re still better off. I have since checked out neighboring counties here, as we’re thinking of moving in the next year or so, and it seems all the counties around here do this. It makes me very angry and frustrated and helpless that someone can come through spraying pesticides that will contaminate my garden.
I called the County Mosquito Control Program Tuesday morning and had our address placed on the “objection list”, which means that they supposedly won’t spray at my address, but as I live in a neighborhood with houses not too far from me it’s hard to see how much good that’s going to do. So between now and this coming Monday evening (they will be doing this weekly through September) we are going to have to figure out how to cover this 800 square foot space, and covering the garden will have to be our regular Monday evening chore.
I’ll keep you posted on what we come up with.
Everything looks so great!
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