Yesterday:

Elodie Holmes and I took off all of the wall of waters off 24 tomato plants and put the cages on them and the row cover over them to protect the plants from the beet leafhopper which can transmit Curly Top Virus to the tomato plants and kill them out here in the Southwest. All this in the FRIGGING HORRIBLE WIND. What a challenge! The winds have been horrible all spring-worse than usual and there seems no end in sight. A great big thank you to Elodie to help me on her day off!

Other things I’ve been busy with in the garden this week:

-Planted 7 planted peppers in wall of waters (WOWs). Peppers need protection from the cold nites and the WOWs provide protection. They are a great spring extension but must be taken off when it gets hot, sometime later in June.

-Planted a new dry bean (Sondrio Select-vining type) that Chris Salem gave me to help her grow out. It is hard to find in the US.

-Planted 2 varieties of cowpeas to grow out for William Woys Weaver to help keep his supply of seeds fresh. He is one of the biggest seed savers of rare varieties of seeds in the US. The seeds are Big Red Ripper, a vining variety and Risina del Trasiorfino, a rare bush variety of cowpeas from Italy.

-I built and installed successfully a new drip timer system and it is working well with no leaks. The old drip timer system really needed to be replaced. Plus I finally put on a sediment filter for our hard water out here that will hopefully make all the drip lines last longer (they can get clogged with our hard water). Also put in almost all new drip lines in the garden.

-I’m growing from seed inside the greenhouse all the butternut squash and summer squash seeds as Roly Polys tend to eat the seedlings right when they break ground as they germinate but won’t touch them when they are about 3 inches tall, so this is a way to thwart them.

Today:

-I will direct seed cucumber seeds and will put Sluggo Plus on the ground where the seeds will come up to keep the Roly Polys from eating them. The reason I’m starting the squash seedlings inside the greenhouse and not the cukes is because I have way too many cuke seeds to start. Sluggo Plus (not Sluggo) is great for keeping the Roly Polys away.

-I’m going to direct seed some Royal Corona bean seeds outside AFTER I weed the area I want them in.