But gardening is a constant struggle. My two worst insect pests are Japanese beetles and squash beetles. Followed by cucumber beetles and cabbage moths.
We try to collect the beetles. We collect hundreds and maybe thousands of these nasty destructive beetles. I dip them in cold water for a few minutes and then give them to the chickens to gobble. But they continue to reproduce and damage the crops. They seem to particularly like blueberry and raspberry plants and my cherry trees. So the "big guns" need to come out. That is, Neem oil. It is an organic and OMRI approved insecticide and fungicide that doesn't really kill the little buggers but makes it so the leaves are not very tasty. That helps protect the blueberries.
But spraying 1200 blueberry plants takes an amazingly long time. And a lot of Neem oil. It took 16 gallons of the stuff to spray the whole field. And it was hot and heavy work. The backpack sprayer holds four gallons. But between the backpack and the water / Neem oil it felt like the whole contraption weighed fifty pounds. My shoulders were not prepared for such heavy work.
The Neem oil also works relatively well on the squash. Not as good on the broccoli because of the oil. The leaves of broccoli do not seem to respond to the insecticide like the squash and blueberry plants do. So I use Bt on them. It too is an organically approved insecticide. But it kills larvae not adults.
But pesty insects are not the only thing a gardener has to deal with. As you could see from the pictures above.... weeds. I seem to spend most of my time and energy on pulling or preventing weeds. But this should be reduced now.
My wonderful and creative husband made a contraption that collects the grass while one is mowing. He mows the grass and it is sucked up through the vacuum and blown into this really neat collecting area that he built specifically for this. The top and 1/4 of the sides are made out of hardware cloth so air can flow.
On its first voyage my husband filled the trailer to capacity. (Forgive the sun spots on the photo please). It's neat seeing the different layers and types of grass he's collected. After he dumps it out (it's a dump trailer as well) I fork it up and spread it no thicker than 2 inches on the just weeded plants. I can't put more on at this point because the grass is green and will mold. But even at two inches the sun is blocked and the weeds cannot grow. After a few days I'll go ahead and put another 2 inches on. That will definitely keep the weeds down. But I have a lot of weeding to do to catch up.
Next year we should be able to keep on top of the weeds now that we have this suck-u-phrazt attached to the mower. I'm very excited about the possibilities. Perhaps I'll have some time to actually work on my flower garden.
Today's Journey Joy - A Very Creative Husband
