The neem oil works, but its use requires constant vigilance and spraying about every 3 to 4 days. Thus far the spider mites haven’t gotten completely out of hand, but it’s the first day of May. I read that one spider mite can produce 600 offspring. SIX HUNDRED. How am I supposed to keep up with that? If I miss even one…

So on cool days, I spray neem oil. I’m running out of cool days…

Last year I tried to use soap and water on the cucumbers to kill the aphids. The aphids laughed. Sure, soapy water kills on contact, but they seemed to wait until after I sprayed to come out in ever larger numbers. I don’t like using the neem around the cucs and watermelon because the bees don’t like the smell (or something.) But this year, the cucs are going to be neemed. Actually last year I finally gave up (too late really) and started using the neem oil. It’s a mad dance, this gardening.

We didn’t get a bumper crop of snap and snow peas. Barely enough for us to eat a few times a week. The neighbors had to suffer this year (and believe me, they do ask.) Two pea plants have already died and a third is following. No idea why. The spider mites haven’t gotten out of control, but it could be early damage from the late freezes. Or some other whim of nature laughing up her sleeve.

This won’t be the year of the onion either. The plants looked poor in the store so I ordered online. They looked just as bad. I might get a few, but they will mostly be green onions. Very small bulbs on what should be giant onions. Oh well, that’s the way it goes.

The best for last: I have several tomatoes out there! None ripe yet, but a decent amount on the plants. The Juliet (a grape variety) has two clusters ready to ripen. I check every day. Sometimes twice. Or even three times if I’m feeling particularly hungry.

Onward!!!

Chica – an Italian tomato that supposedly can handle the heat. Okay, well let’s hope so because I haven’t found one that can and Chica didn’t handle cool weather at all. It’s a tiny plant making almost no progress in growth in two months and counting. A third seed I put in the pot a month ago finally came up. Soil too cold or were you just making a grand entrance???

Mama Mia Another Italian paste tomato. I found this one at a nursery. No one could tell me much about it (I hate nurseries with people who say, “can I help you find something?” and then it turns out that they know next to nothing about the plants.) Mama Mia has a great name and it looked homeless so I decided to bring it to the garden and give it a try!

Burpee’s Big Boy Most of the big boy family and any beefsteak tomato are failures here in hot Texas. At least they haven’t been good producers for me. When I do get a tomato they tend to be on the mushy side–a side effect from the heat. I’ve heard that this strain in particular is *the* one to try so…I grew some from seeds and also came across a lovely specimen in the nursery. See “homeless” reference above.

As in the past, I’m growing Juliets (large grape), Celebrities and some combo of Italian paste tomatoes from leftover seeds from two years ago (last year, I did not get any Italian tomatoes.) The Juliets are blooming and one bloom has already collapsed as though a tomato is inside!!!

The snap peas were coming along gorgeously, until 30 mile an hour winds this morning. Three branches WITH beans and blossoms have snapped against the trellis. Waaaaah. I hate when that happens. I count every bean as a victory…

The tomato plants have not been making their usual comeback. I suspected any number of varmits, creatures, bugs, diseases…but no, tomato horn worms was the winner. Now that the bugs are down in numbers due to cooler nights (and seasonality) the horn worms apparently decided to move in for the final kill.

If you’ve never had the dubious pleasure of dealing with a tomato horn worm, let me take this opportunity to bring you into the fold. Tomato horn worms can strip a plant of leaves and blossoms in under a week–a full grown plant. They run from starter size–about 1/2 long and 1/4 inch around–to the size of a pro basketball player’s shoe. Okay, maybe slightly smaller. But I swear I picked one off this morning that was the size of *my* shoe, and I do not have small feet. Is there *anything* grosser than having to stomp on a worm full of digested plant juice? Seriously, we are talking grosser than gross. You have to smash carefully because you do *not* want the thing to squirt all over you. So you sort of roll it under your shoe, mushing it down to a…well, a rather giant green smear about the size of your shoe.

And that’s after you pry these fat, disgusting suckers off with either a crowbar (my weapon of choice) or pliers. Pliers work, but if the worm is big, it might touch you. And if it touches you, it will grab onto your hand with the suction and claws of a leech on steroids. It is *most* unpleasant.

Yes, there is an organic worm killer (BT worm killer. Kills only leaf eating worms.) Of course, I’ll be spraying that tomorrow morning when it is cool out. The problem is that the worm has to eat a few of the leaves before the worm feels ‘full’ and stops eating–forever. Meanwhile, my poor remaining tomato plant will suffer some additional damage.

Darn worms.

I went out yesterday to plant some parsley and cilantro. I figured I’d only have to till up a small section and get those going. They are great winter plants here. Okay, the truth is, I also grabbed the snap pea seeds, the onion seeds and the leek seeds. I do not have the time to have a winter garden this year. No time to plant peas and keep up with them. Onions…well, they will generally take care of themselves if they germinate.

I just took my little hand shovel. You know, the ones you find in gardening store, generally referred to as trowels. I read an article once that said if you have more than one grub per foot of soil, you have a problem. What about if that number is about 10 to 12 per foot of soil?????

I dig out grubs by trowel/hoe. They have to be squished. Yes, sorry. I hope you weren’t eating breakfast or lunch. It’s beyond disgusting. I won’t describe the ooze, the smell and I certainly won’t tell you what forty smashed grubs looks like. Why can’t cats eat grubs? As a part of a healthy cat diet, I mean??? (Junior might very well try to eat a grub that I dig up if he got his paws on it. He would certainly try to play with it.)

Birds. Where are the birds when you need them??? I would, oh so gladly, churn up the grubs and let them eat away!!!!

Sigh. I did a much smaller patch than I wanted. It needs to be tilled at least twice more before I can plant anything. Otherwise I’ll just be feeding tender roots to disgusting black-headed grubs.

I did throw down a cilantro seed or two. I don’t think grubs eat cilantro. Do you?

Thirty dollars, not so bad, right? Except we needed hose end parts, power cords, and more quick release connectors…and suddenly it was another 30 dollars in the hole. So…for this year, the water barrels are going to be lucky to get back to even.

I didn’t mind watering by hand (moving the hose from plant to plant) in the spring. Yes, it takes at least a half hour, but when the weather is nice and the plants are relatively small, moving around the garden, inspecting the plants and just being outside is fine with me. But when it’s 80 degrees first thing in the morning, with humidity that slaps you hard in the face when you step outside…not so great. Moving around the plants to water each one is a lot harder also. The leaves pick at you, the bugs pick at you, the hose is harder to move around…the water barrels don’t provide enough flow for me to hook up the leaker hoses. There simply isn’t enough pressure. Thus my brilliant idea to get a pump…

And so the project goes. Or grows.

Now that I have a water pump, maybe I can handle more barrels??? You think?

I do have one watermelon forming. It’s small yet so don’t be counting my watermelons before they are larger than a quarter!!! There’s a just-bigger-than-a-golf-ball cantaloupe out there too. No sprite melons. I haven’t even seen anything but male blossoms. The plant is beautiful though. Nice and green and creeping all over the garden.

The chili plants had a few beetles chewing on them. The snap pea plants are almost completely dead except near the very top. Disappointing yields on those and I planted them five or six times. A bird ate all my blueberries. Sometimes you get fruits, sometimes you get work without the yield. I’ll have to instruct those cats to watch the blueberry bush more carefully (like AT ALL.) The cats have been doing their job where the tomatoes are concerned. Different bird, different time of day.

Not to worry. I’m focused on those melons even though I’m not counting on them.

Neem oil versus milk for mildew/fungus: I think the milk wins. Both seem to help, but the milk seems more effective. When I was only using neem oil, I still saw mildew to such a large degree on the snap peas, I think it could have overtaken and killed the plant. The mildew was probably caused by cloudy/wet weather we had, as well as possibly spread by no-see-ums. They were flocking about.

Remember that you need sunlight (according to studies) for milk to work. I spray after it rains and have been combining it with the neem oil. I use the milk at about half strength (mixed from the dry powder.) I think the milk worked better on the rosebush spots too.

Neem oil has been fairly effective against spider mites. That is to say it is keeping them under control. It hasn’t eliminated them completely, but I’m not sure a nuclear bomb could do that. I spray in the evenings when a few cooler days are expected. I am very careful not to use more than the recommended mix because it can and does burn the leaves (both my snap peas and tomatoes got burned when I wasn’t measuring very carefully). Using less than the recommended mix, doesn’t seem to get the mites. Mites are stubborn and way too hardy.

Neem is very effective against aphids. Not sure about thripes yet, but I’m trying. The thripes get into the blossoms of tomato, cucumber and other melons. Whenever they are around, the fruit seems to have a hard time setting (doesn’t set at all or the fruit is small and/or deformed.) I think I have less thripes around than last year, but none of the melons or cucs have set yet. Ants are a huge problem because the minute I kill off the aphids and thripes, the ants bring more into the garden to harvest the “dew” from these insects. I hate ants almost as much as the thripes.

There is also a lack of bees in the garden–a bit unusual since I had a gazillion earlier. There was a late freeze which might have affected them. I’m told the neem oil is perfectly safe for bees and never spray them directly at any rate. Of course when bug season starts around here, there are many other gardeners spraying more lethal ingredients than I use.

As for Junior and his door training–sigh. The little kit isn’t so thrilled with this door thing.  He is going through faster, but he still waits for us to hold it open, at least partway!  When it is propped open with a close -pin, he hops in and out at will.  When it is closed, he acts like it is an imovable object.  But we’re working on it.  A few more days and I think he’ll have it.  No, really, I think he will!

I think the lack of rain is the main reason I won’t be seeing too many of these bulbs.  I did water the spot, but with all the other watering I do, I’m pretty conservative with the water, so this area didn’t get a lot.

The variety I planted are just colorful and cute as can be.  They aren’t tall–I happen to love a short, neat flower.  I am hoping to eventually plant the crocus variety that produces saffron (Crocus sativus).  Saffron is a spice made from the orange staman that you see inside the purple flower.  It takes something like six or seven flowers to get enough saffron to make one dish.  I’m not even certain I like saffron as a spice, but since it is so expensive, I figured the only way I’d get to try it was to grow my own.  We’ll see how it goes.  I had planned on ordering the bulbs in the spring–but it turns out I have to order them in September.

Meanwhile, I’m pleased to have the flowers from these beauties!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090219/hl_time/08599188014500

I’m not totally organic–I do fertilize.  But I also mulch out the ying-yang and I’m constantly rotating and tilling.

The second article is a neat project that turns front lawns into productive gardens.  I will say that my garden looks *nothing* like the landscaped beauty in the picture.  I am a hodgepodge gardener.  It goes in where it fits.  It gets crowded in there (very crowded).  Things get moved, picked…and not trimmed often enough.  I’ve always resented having to waste water on the front lawn.  It never looks that great anyway–in Texas it is simply too hot to have a lush yard.   In order to have a lawn, the grass has to be more like crabgrass–able to survive heat, droughts and foot traffic.  This is not the lawn of the picture books that you get to roll on.  Roll on a Texas lawn and you’re likely to get bruised–and eaten by fire ants.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1816764,00.html

Does anyone want to hear about my cucumber plants sprouting?  No?  Come on!  You know you want to plant something!

(I was going to post a picture of my blueberry bush.  It’s blooming.  The problem is that it only has blossoms and no leaves.  In the sunshine blue type, the flowers for the fruit show up before the leaves.  This results in pretty flowers on what appears to be a dead bush…)