Catching Up

Its been a while since I posted. I could whine about the new job and the garden taking up all my time, or I could just give an update as to where we stand. Lemme esplain - no, there is too much, lemme sum up - we picked:

• Our first string beans on June 29th
• Our first jalapenos on July 14th
• Our first cucumbers on July 15h
• Our first eggplants on July 17th
• Our first grape tomatoes today.

OK, the tomatoes were a couple of days early, but I wanted them off the vine before the rain hit this afternoon. Speaking of tomatoes, for the first time in six seasons here, we have green tomato horn worms on our tomato plants. On Sunday I noticed that several plants had serious eating damage. I took a look and immediately spotted their telltale droppings. I pulled off four massive ones on Sunday, and then one small and two large ones on Monday. I think I got them all. I did some research on the ugly buggers and one guy suggested a pretty smart idea, which was to prune all damaged leaves and stems, so that you can identify any new foliage attacks. So far, I see no new damage. Here's a photo of the four from Sunday.

They seemed to especially like my four grape tomato plants. On the plus side, so far we have been very lucky with the early blight that has plagued us the past two seasons. I've only picked off a few infected leaves, but have not even had to think about breaking out the Serenade. I'm sure the two plus week dry spell helped, and I'm not complaining.