Ruling with an iron spray gun

Well, I cleared the earwigs off the yardlong beans last night -- the plants were covered in shiny brown backs. It felt like old times. My aim with the soap gun is improving, though. I think I found where they were hiding out (in the pepper bed) and wiped out as many there as I could; it was inside the garden, which explains why the bean row facing the garden was hardest hit while the one on the edge of the DMZ was barely nibbled. If they're coming from inside the garden, at least there's a finite number to eliminate.

I also took a bunch off the corn -- who knew they liked to eat tassels as well as silks? Not too many lurking up top, but I took them out anyway. Some of the silks out there are pretty long, some are quite short; I've been casually hand-pollinating the particularly short ones, especially on the outside rows. Hopefully they'll come out well, so long as the water-stress doesn't get too bad.

Speaking of hand-pollinating, I did a second summer squash this morning and there'll be another tomorrow. So we'll have three crooknecks -- the costata is starting to get up to speed with lots of buds, and the whites are looking to bloom but need to get synced up. (There was a male blossom this morning with nothing to use it on.) I have no idea why the dime-sized melon blossoms get pollinated by bees while the squash flowers the size of your hand don't, but I suppose that's one of life's great mysteries. I'll just keep an eye on the ones I really care about, and make sure I get out there in the morning to pollinate them.

I transplanted the melons and winter squash, and they barely seem to have noticed. Hopefully they'll settle in quickly... the sweet potatoes are being dainty again, wilting and generally having the vapors over their own transplant. They always do that. I half-covered the leaves with mulch in lieu of shade-cloth; I'll still lose a few, but I think I have some more sprouts due to come up soon, and I'll just keep planting slips until they take.

The poor okra... three gone, now. I'll have to grow my two replacements up to a larger size before transplanting them, if they can't take moderate earwig damage.

I'm seeing mite signs on a few tomatoes. I've been wetting down the tomato area to keep the dust down on hot days, and spritzing the lower leaves with a hose while I'm at it, but it looks like time for the next miticide application. Increased humidity and taking off the dust can do only so much. It'll be the oil that smells good this time (it has clove and cinnamon and heaven knows what other oils in it). Anything smells better than Neem.

I'm still getting loads of green tomatoes, though. Lots of blooming going on, and they're still growing pretty well. I fed the smaller ones yesterday, so they may put on another growth spurt... As it is, even the small ones look better than my usual lot at this time of year (at about the same size), and the large ones are already almost as big as I've ever managed to grow a tomato plant. And it's only June... this definitely bodes well.

The peppers seem to be happy about life, too. Deep green and flowering. Though I seem to have mixed up at least one -- my Chocolate Bell has a pepper on it that looks suspiciously like one of Peter's Aussies. Ah, well... it's supposed to be a ripping good variety, so it can't hurt to have another one.

I replaced the leaky valve out front; even if I haven't yet replaced the broken pipes out there, the new valve eliminates the leaks in the irrigation system, so I've brought it back up to pressure. The plants weathered a week of no regular water pretty well, but if it's turning hot again I want the well water running. If nothing else, it lets me wet down the dust, which I really can't do with a bucket.

All I have to do now, in terms of major work, is break up the ground for a new corn bed and the trenches for hard irrigation line out back. I need to do the trenches in the front yard, too, which means chopping through roots rather than rocks... either way it's hard work. I'm not up to it today. Maybe Monday.

It looks green out there, and even the milkweed is clean and happy. Everything that needs to go in is in, except maybe basil, and I'll try to take care of that as I can... but all the large plants (besides the okra and yardlong beans) are looking good and lush. I have several pods on one popbean, and the red one and a white will bloom soon, so that experiment should have at least some success. I'm just about down to clearing out the little piles of rocks (again), routine weeding, pollination, and waiting. And watering, until I get to putting in the system. Not bad.