in past years there have always been a few around gnawing on the beans or the grape leaves.
i'm not seeing any this year. maybe due to the early heat or repeated late frosts.
still interesting how things can change from season to season.
in other news...
went out to pull garlic the other day. managed to get all the garlic up that was in lighter soil (several hundred heads), but the garlic in the clay is going to have to wait until we get some rain. i managed to get three clumps out by jumping up into the air to get the shovel down a bit, but it took repeated hops to do it (singing hippity-hoppity each time). ended up just taking the bulbules off the top of the rest and left it until after we get some rain. i need my feet and ankles and that was a bit much.
as for results, i can't compare between the sandy loam and the clay garlic yet until i get that out of the ground. however, i can report results for sandy loam as being excellent. the biggest factors being full sun, spacing and starting clove/bulbule size. water did not seem to have as much of a difference (as the smaller cloves with less spacing had the same amount of water as the larger cloves with more space), but i'm sure it would have made a difference in results had i not watered at all. the same small cloves and bulbules were planted along a front edge that i did not water at all. they did grow, but the heads were about 1/3 the size of the irrigated patch.
next season i'll have a better supply of larger starting cloves so i can run yet another spacing comparison patch and also do a more careful comparison between the garlic which has the tops taken off and those that don't. this year i could swear i took the tops off the larger cloves of garlic (with more space too) and it seems they came back and had tops again. next year i'll be doubly sure to do that and check them again so i have a better comparison. oh well it was fun and the garlic that i did get from that sandy loam came out of the ground just by pulling (didn't have to dig it up much at all). now that's cream-puff gardening around here to have that... :) i'm so much more used to the rock hard clay.
will be pulling the larger beets soon. they have grown so quickly i didn't even know they were ready until i looked yesterday and saw the shoulders of the beets. i suspect these will be the best beets yet.
beans blooming. peapod peas don't know how they'll do with this heat, but they are flowering a ton right now, very pretty purple/pink/white flowers. keeping everything watered every three or four days. the tomatoes are putting on a lot more blooms. watering i make sure to drench the whole plant to give it a bit of cooling. absolutely no disease or bug troubles with them this year (so far) they are dry within a few minutes. okra is not doing much, but that is my own fault for planting it in rock hard soil and where it doesn't get a ton of water either.
cucumbers on cages, doing good.
volunteer squash plants in the onions, i think we'll leave some of them and one likely to take over a pathway near the tomatoes.
has anyone here done companion planting of squash and onions (planting the squash late enough that the onions are already largely grown)? it looks to be workable because of the different habits of the plants but if anyone has done this i'm all ears.
we are surrounded by blooming corn this year. i'm sure all the farmers are hoping for rain soon, it's in the forecast as chances of showers, but like yesterday the storms went all around us again, i don't believe it until i see it hitting the ground...
songbird