Another Garden Update

Time for another garden update.  March-planted vegetables  are doing well, except for a few hills of potatoes, which I replanted last week.  Everything ahead by a few weeks.  Radishes ready to eat, lettuce soon.

This coming week I’ll set out tomato plants—fingers crossed that frosty mornings will hold off until fall.  I’ll also plant green beans, more sweet corn, cucumbers, zucchini, winter squash, pumpkins, gourds, everything that’s not yet in the ground.

Alas, this is the first year that potato bugs have appeared before the entire garden is planted.  On Saturday Steve sprayed the potatoes with a new concoction we found last year called  “Potato Beetle Beater.”  Can’t beat that for a name.  You spray it on the potato plants when the first orange egg clusters appear on the underside of the potato plants.  The newly hatched and hungry potato beetles eat the treated leaves and that’s it.  No more beetles.  Unless the rain washes off the spray.  Unless this year’s crop of beetles is even tougher than last year.  We’ll see.  Old fashioned way of picking off the mature beetles and drowning them in a pail of water still works when all else fails.

NO BLOG ON MAY 27.  In Colorado until May 31.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:  This year’s gardening season is beginning to look like the most unusual ever.

CHECK THIS OUT:  My one day workshop: “Writing From Your Life,” October 13, 8-4. The Clearing, Door County. For more information go to. http://theclearing.org/current/index.shtml

UPCOMING EVENTS:

May 24-31. Avon, Colorado. Writing and researching.

June 3, 1-3 p.m., Pendarvis, Mineral Point.  Garden Wisdom

June 6, 10:30. College Week, UW-Madison Campus, Ames County Novels

June 13, 6:00 p.m.  Wisconsin Public TV Major Donors Meeting, Center For Discovery, UW-Madison Campus.  Early history of Agricultural Education in Wisconsin including farm stories.

June 15, 1-2:00 p.m. S.E. Wisconsin Book Festival, UW-Waukesha campus, Waukesha.