6.27.2005

Hey Beerman

Hey--beer man! Fresh Beer is my new mantra. Its almost easier to say what earwigs don't eat in my garden than what they do eat. Peas, strawberries, blackberries. They ate EVERYTHING else. This year they seemed particularly fond of turnip greens--which was fine--share and share alike. But when I dumped out 20 earwigs from a single head of lettuce yesterday morning...Game On! So I came upon this thread--that link above about earwigs not eating things...HA! Well then me and da kid poured out 3 Breckenridge Pale Ales into cat food tins and plastic cup bottoms and set them out. First earwig was toast in less than 5 minutes. This morning I ambled out and found the cat tins Full! and I mean full of earwigs. The plastic cups weren't so voluminous but still worthy. Tonight, we buy some malt liquor. Those little lushes will be so high...just before they die. Do you think they're fussy about the kind of beer? I'll report back with more info on Colorado Earwigs Beer Preferences.

6.21.2005

Peas Everywhere

No..Not really--but I've harvested most of the snow peas for the year--probably one more decent sized harvest--think I really got the hang of picking them before they go bitter; both by feel and by look. Many shell peas still to be gleaned. Including the dwarf grays-which finally expressed their name. When fully plumped they're still little guys. Its the earwig that are eating turnips. I say--Let them eat turnip greens!
Tomatoes are finally taking off--peppers and eggplants are not quite as assertive.
Still haven't gotten everything into the ground--hopefully today.

The allotment hasn't germinated quite like I would like--the black beans have been poor--the cow peas are very poor and the garbanzo beans are um...not at all. Adzukis and calypsos are pretty good and the gourds are ok. Pumpkins and squash are fine. Oooooo I can't wait to see what happens.

6.17.2005

Peas have arrived

Well then--once a month is better than nothin--
Down to 3 trays to plant--hope to have them in by Jun 21rst end of spring--
Garden harvests include--lettuces, baby beets (including new Bull's Blood stripy beat--much brighter than the chioggia), kale, snow,shell and sugar snap peas, turnips(yellow ball turnips are neato), of course ORACH, mignonette strawberries, yellow snow peas, radishes are done:( although the rattail radishes are just coming now.

The allotment has 21 different kinds of winter squash and pumpkin planted and almost all have come up--also hopi red and golden grain amaranth and blue corn around the walking stick kale.
The gourds are just coming up and only decent germination of the beans so far--garbanzos have come up nice tho.

At home the earwigs are back in force eating everything the get near. Fortunately I have a roadblock of the dwarf sugar peas keeping them from one side of the garden. The ate all my freaking cucumbers--Fark--had to reseed.

Froze some spinach--looks like the viraflay has Much longer staying power than the corrente or the bloomesdale. The Super Sugar Snaps are the clear winner along with the dwarf grays. Yellow snows are doing pretty well. Again none of the shell peas have done that well. One variety is doing okay -- my map got completely wiped out by a nighttime rainstorm--left it out over night==-=ughy! Many of the summer seeds were out too!!! Must have been nearly 50 packs of seeds out in the rain -- terrible! Don't know whether they're all ruined or not. Either way it was a gardening calamity.

Anyway--hope to get everything else in on Sunday and monday nights after the Buffalo Creek Tri.

more soon--or at least sooner