A toast to this roast...

Kelly surprised me with a delicious grandma-inspired roast today, packed with green beans, chives, and scallions from the garden.

I pruned back the pumpkin vines and stuck the ends into the ground to promote side shoots and fruit growth. 

This morning before work, I hand-pollinated the pumpkin, zucchini, and squash plants. 

It has rained so much this summer that I've only had to water the garden artificially a few times.

Last Week of June...

Click to enlarge pictures.

We had a tremendously rainy week, but these guys all seemed to enjoy it.

Little zucchinis starting to grow in this twisted mess of a plant.

Lost one broccoli plant to bugs and slugs, but the rest are getting there. Should be flowering soon.

Little cucumber growing underneath that yellow flower. The cucumbers are rapidly taking over the trellis.

These giant leaves will shade the pumpkins. I have to steer them down the alley, but some are climbing the fence.

You can see some acorn squash starting to come in beneath that closed flower.

Pits of Fire...

Parents came over today to help build a new fire pit. 

Izzy posing in the foreground. That's just a temporary patio around it, I want to lay down a stone patio when I have the time.

Everything coming along as planned for the middle of June.

New trellises were built for cucumbers, tomatoes, and cantaloupe.

The potjie pot getting ready to be broken in.

Vegetable Garden Planner

Found a cool online garden planner at Mother Earth News. Here are a couple screenshots of the current crop, as well as a chart with estimates on harvesting and planting times for my zip code.

Click to enlarge:

Droppin' Acid...

Blueberry bushes are acid lovers... so I gave mine some Holly-tone to lower the PH of the soil. Then I heeded Amy Matthew's advice over at http://www.heirloombroccoli.com/ and added some coffee grounds around the plant as well, to "act as a neurotoxin to baby slugs who then don’t reach adulthood." I know that coffee has the same effect on me, so why not.

Used some of the Earth-tone organic insecticidal soap to take on those golden tortoise beetles, which didn't seem to work because we saw two of them having sex underneath one of the leaves no more than an hour after I sprayed it.

Then I fed all the plants with some organic Neptune's Harvest fish emulsion.

My garden crap.

Soil test says 5.5 ph, pretty ideal for blueberries.

New rain gauge (impulse buy).

Izzy never stops wanting to play frisbee.

I bought this potjie pot from an awesome 

Amish market way out in Bainbridge, Ohio last weekend. 

It is sitting on what will soon become the new firepit out back.

Besides the chewed up sweet potato plants, everything else is looking pretty healthy and on track.

All that glitters is gold...

My sweet potato plants were eaten up today, I looked under the leaves and found some larvae as well as the little culprits. I picked them all off and mailed them somewhere exotic... like hell.

I found one potato beetle (go figure) and a couple shiny ones that the Missouri Botanical Garden is calling the golden tortoise beetle.

The internets are telling me to add some ladybugs to the garden. 

Do I put out a "Help Wanted" poster?  I've also read that you should.

"Apply an organic insecticide for chewing insects, such as Safer, by following the directions on the bottle. Natural insecticide solutions are commonly composed of flower extracts and fatty acids, which kill these beetles on contact."

Read more: How to Kill Tortoise Beetles on Tomato Plants | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5670529_kill-tortoise-beetles-tomato-plants.html#ixzz1OAIDLKSE