I can win the battle, can I win the war?

We were chased from the garden last Sunday evening by a thunderstorm with several rows left to plant. The live plants survived the week in my dark shop and I got some planting done tonight. I finished up the corn and now have three rows. I may plant another couple of rows in a few weeks to extend the harvest. I always plan on doing that and get tired of gardening by then. Maybe blogging will keep me going just so I don't look like the quitter I am.

Half a row of dill and half a row of cucumbers finished up tonight's planting. The dill was planted from seed...tiny, paper thin, impossible to manage seed. The instructions on the pack said to plant 2" apart and thin to 6". The row is more of a continuum of seed than individual seeds. In fact, the wind picked up slightly while I was trying to get some of the extra seeds back in the packet and now my garden is a continuum of dill seeds.

I bought the cucumber plants last week. 4 pickling cucumbers and 4 "tasty green" cucumbers. cucumbers take up a lot of room on spreading vines that take over the garden. Last year I tried growing the vines on a trellis, I'm going to see if I can improve on that this year and grow them up instead of out.

I canned a few jars of pickles last year. The bread and butter pickles were pretty good. The regular dill pickles came out way too salty.

There's still more I plan to plant this weekend so I'll probably have another blog soon.

COLORADO POTATO BEETLE AND HOW I WON A BATTLE
My wife found a Colorado potato beetle walking through the garden tonight. These things are the worst. They eat potato, tomato, and other plants down to the ground some years and they've developed resistance to just about every pesticide there is. The home owner remedy is to spray B.t. or Bacillus thuringiensis, a bio-pesticide based on the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. Even that only works if ingested by the beetle and only when it's in the larval stage. Not really much help when a thousand beetles are chomping on your garden.

Colorado Potato Beetle.
AKA Potato Bug

Always looking for a better way, I came up with something last year that worked against the Colorado Potato Beetle. Before I share, I want to let you know that according to the pesticide label, "It is against federal law to use any product in a manner that is inconsistent with its labeling." And I always respect federal law, even the really really stupid ones. So consider the following a fictitious story.

There is a fairly new (not much more than a decade old) pesticide that Potato Bugs aren't resistant too yet. Yes, that's what we call them...potato bugs. This new chemical is sold under a couple of different names. One that's used for the Potato Bug is Admire. Admire is sold only to licensed commercial growers and is only sold in quantities that would be ridiculous for a guy with a garden to own. But the same chemical ingredient (imidacloprid) is sold in garden centers under the name "Bayer advanced Tree and Shrub Insect Control".

And yes, that's the same Bayer that makes aspirin. It seems that chemical companies are chemical companies and when you discover one that makes you better, you market it as a medicine. When you discover one that kills stuff, you just market it as a pesticide.

Although the chemical is the same, the concentrations of the Bayer Tree and Shrub pesticide and Admire are very different so I had to do some math and mix the stuff with water to get the concentration right. Converting Admire's listed "active ingredients per acre" rate to the little 18 inch circle I'm spraying around a plant took some figuring and I'll have to do the math again this year but I ended up with such a small amount of chemical needed that I mixed it with an eye dropper. But this stuff worked well and worked immediately. I had dead potato bugs within hours.

There's more good news. This chemical isn't just for potatoes. The same chemical is also sold for use on lots of fruits and vegetables under the name Provado. With a little more math, I was able to figure out the right mix and protect just about everything in my garden last year. Last year was the first time I actually let my garden grow all season. Every year before that, I gave up and just mowed it down my mid-summer because of all the damage done by insects, weeds, and disease. But I've mostly tackled the insect problem.

And the best part is Imidacloprid is systemic. It's drawn into the plant through the roots and gets into the entire plant making the entire plant poisonous to bugs so once it's applied it works for a long long time.

Now I just need to find out a way to kill whatever's eating my strawberries.

The strawberry patch massacre.