Recovery

The rains continued into this week, with another good dumping on Friday, but since then it has been sunny, dry and windy - in the end, good conditions for drying things out.

So this weekend was dedicated to catching up on weeding and seeding. Saturday I finally got the winter squash and pumpkins planted (Butternut, Sunshine, Hubbards, pie pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns). I also planted a second sowing a few other items - purple bush beans, soy beans, cucumbers, and golden bush zucchini. I replanted two varieties of corn that got flooded out (Spring Treat and Luscious). Lastly, I planted another variety of carrots for later harvesting (Sugarsnax).

Lots of weeding was also in order. Among other things, I had to find the basil buried among the weeds. Just a few more things still need weeding, most of them flowers, so I'm feeling just about caught up. I'm certainly getting good use of my scuttle hoe these days.

Here's what you're seeing in the photo:

• Upper left corner is broccoli, with some small zucchini sprouting to the right and some pumpkin mounds along the top of the photo.
• The white thing is some floating row cover over newly planted cucumbers. The eggplants are to the immediate left of the row cover.
  
• Left of the row cover is some very small basil starts, to the right are beans.
• In front of the row cover are onions, with the shallots to the left, and some radishes (and tons of weeds) to the left of the shallots.
• In the foreground are various greens - Tatsoi mustard, pac choi, arugula, lettuce mix and some small romaine bottom right.

Perkins Update

An update from the People's Republic of Perkins is long overdue. To say it's been a challenging year for gardening in west Michigan is darn understatement. But tonight we took the first major cutting of lettuce and spinach, so I can't say all the trouble has not been worth it.

To begin with, spring is about two weeks behind this year. Our last frost came the week before Memorial Day, and I didn't get peas planted until May. I usually plant my peas in late March!

We did, however, have great weather on Memorial Day weekend for planting. Cool temps, nice breezes and clear blue skies. I got many things planted on target and the cool weather helped the greens germinate well. Shortly thereafter, I planted the tomato (30 plants!) and pepper starts.

But then more trouble came. First were the bugs. Last week I noticed two expected pests, but in near epic numbers. Midweek I noticed that there were the flea beetles taking up residence on my eggplants. I also saw their telltale bite holes on some pac choi and tatsoi that had sprouted. I was going to spray on Friday, but there was rain in the air and more predicted for Saturday, so I just went out to the garden to check progress on in the evening. Indeed, the flea beetles were making progress.

As I was commiserating about the flea beetles, another gardener shared with me that the week's 80-degree temperatures were also bringing out the cucumber beetles. She had them all over her cucurbits and melons. My summer squash, melons and cucumbers were not up yet, so I was not too worried, but I still could not believe that the beetles were that heavy already.

I planned to spray a little rotenon this weekend to deal with the flea beetles, but regular thunderstorms made spraying less than feasible. And apparently flea beetles don't mind eating in a storm. By the time I sprayed today, my eggplants were quite decimated.

The other problem has been, ironically, rain. Too much of it. We've been getting daily dumpings of 1-2 inches since Friday. Warm weather and rain has been great for the weeds, but not real good for the rest of the garden. The corn is looking terrible, so I'm thinking another planting is going to be in order this year. The onion beds look like rice paddies.


All the water is making it so that weeds cannot be controlled by pulling or hoeing, so the garden is also becoming a jumble of seedlings and weeds. Thankfully, today's forecast is calling for dry skies for a few days starting this Tuesday. Hopefully I will be able to get some of the more critical weeding done some evenings this week.


But, like I said, getting that first cutting of fresh lettuce and spinach has been a modest reward for this year's work. The peas are also coming along nicely (although weedy), and the radishes are plump and mild.

I'm hitting the catalogs tonight and putting in an order for more seed for corn and chinese greens and some floating row cover. If things don't come up the way they should, there's still plenty of time to plant other things. After all, a pack of seeds is only a couple of bucks, so we'll just try again.