Another squash success and a critter visitor

Weather has not changed, still hot, a bit muggy and so getting out before noon has been a difficult thing. By the time the evening rolls around I'm busy with other things and have to make a point of taking my 'temperature' walk to the garden around dusk.

 I updated the photos app on my phone and lo and behold there is a 'adjust sky color' option now that makes the colors closer to actual colors! No change in the photo editing on blogger unfortunately.

The dirt was disturbed around all the beds yesterday when I got out there. Just shuffled the dirt around looking for bugs or something. Didn't get into the raised bed thankfully, probably due to it being tall and there's a huge prickly squash plant overtaking the entire bed.

 

 

 

Nothing left behind, they didn't dig up the cilantro but the left hand tomatillo was dug under a bit so I just moved the dirt around and packed it all back in again. I watered last (that) night so no dirt was disturbed today. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadly, I decided to yank the strawberry. It was not recovering well and when I pulled it out and washed the rootball, there was one tiny cluster of white roots, everything else was black and soft. Into the compost pile it went. Will try again next year.

 

Another squash has taken off! Top two pictures are from yesterday and the bottom one from today. You can see the four unfertilized fruit lined up compared to the one that is growing. There's male flowers but not open enough for the females to take So will be letting that one get a bit more yellow than the first one and I also realized like the cucumber the squash is growing in the direction of the front left corner. I have no idea why other than that's west and has the most sun on it?? No clue.

I noticed some good size flowers on the peppers! Just because it is so late in the season I'm letting them flower and do whatever they want. The Fish pepper continues to grow thankfully and I am pushing the leaves aside to get it as much sun as possible, no flowers on that yet, still too young. Will be bringing out my paint brush tomorrow and try to get pollen on all the flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still nothing on the beast tomatillos other than flowers. They are incredibly happy and hoping that they get to the point where they start growing fruit! Wondering if there's not enough phosphorus for making fruit?

Potato is still blooming so that will be finishing up in another month and the tomatoes I'm letting flower as well. After I took the pictures of the cilantro I decided to yank them because I noticed they were bolting even at that size. Still no clue what that larger leaf plant is at the back.

While examining the tomatillos something caught my eye with movement and I almost batted it away thinking it was a spider. Glad I didn't! Judging from the curled abdomen I think this is a male praying mantis! Not many bugs around but you go ahead and hang out little guy! Yay! 

 

 I decided to plant the last two jalapeños in the 'nightshade bed'. Still have those two tomatoes that I am really wondering if Layla even wants them. She seems to want to keep her spindly tomatoes even though they aren't going to grow very well. I certainly don't have any room to plant them, not even any dirt if I wanted to do pots. Will have to take pictures of them and see what I can get for trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking to the garden today I saw something that looked like a caterpillar on the sidewalk and bent down to check. It was a caterpillar but not moving. Not sure what happened to it and glad Rocky wasn't there to check it out. It looks like it was eating that piece of leaf, the little specks on the sidewalk are seeds from the liquidambar even if they do look like poop, they're very crunchy. It is a Red Humped Caterpillar and turns into a nondescript small moth.

Yay for advances and critter patrol in the garden!