Well, you win some, you loose some. This past week was an interesting one. On Tuesday I spent the day fighting off the Army Worms. I thought at first they were tomato fruit worms and a neighbor called them cutworms. Apparently they are all related. But I sent an email to the USU extension services with my bowl full of those nasty things (see below) and Taun said that they came from the alfalfa field and I was lucky that the ground was not moving. Uhm, seriously? If I had that many I don't think I'd ever garden again. I have faith things will be better - see, I'm starting more lettuce.
I did have a crazy run in with the tomato hornworm. I found a one inch tiny one first - not bad. Then as I was shaking the only roma tomato in a cage this big fat hornworm flopped on the ground. It was at least 3/4 inch wide and 5 inches long. Gag! I screamed and then jumped back a few feet. I lost half my roma tomatoes which is sad because I really wanted to try making my own tomato sauce because I purchased one of these this year. I don't know if the plants will recover enough to give me some more. I ripped off all the larger roma tomatoes - green or otherwise and checked for holes and if they were good, they got washed in soapy water and placed in the window as you can see here. I have 8 roma plants and I don't think I'm going to get much after all.
See - as my friend Keiko said, "I think I just threw up in my mouth." No, I did not touch the hornworm - I scooped it into the bowl with the lid. Yes, I did pick off all those army worms by hand. Thank you Atlas garden gloves. And having said that, I will never buy leather gardening gloves again. The nitrile touch garden gloves have spoiled me. They wash well and wick the moisture away. I LOVE them. They fit well. And I don't get dirt down into the tips of the glove fingers like I did with the leather gloves. I blame the seams for that. Atlas nitrile touch garden gloves rock!
I did have some luck on Thursday and harvested this nice bunch of tomatoes, 1 more squash, and 4 lemon cucumbers. Loving the lemon cucs.
And go check out Daphne's Dandelions to see fun a beautiful harvests from all over the world. It's also interesting to see how far behind I am living here in the tops of the mountains. And I have to share this photo again. Can you blame me?
3 comments:
I checked out the sauce maker. Goes to the top of my Christmas list this year. I only put in 1 Roma plant and boy am I sorry. Utah stole my heart years ago. I absolutely love the beautiful mountains, and the people are great too. I've spent alot of time in Ogden.
I'm sorry about the hornworm. I ran into one last year, on my sunkist tomatoes. Freaked me out because I had never seen one before. What was weird to me was that it was covered in white sacs.
Come to find that the white sacs meant that a parasitic wasp had gotten to the hornworm, which is a good thing.
Death to those little buggers!
WOW....that's a lot of tomato worms. Hopefully you have some chickens to give them to.
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