Tumbling Tom And Squash Borer

It is official!  The big Tumbling Tom tomato plant has made it into the garden.  When I removed it from the pot, I was somewhat surprised to see roots all the way down to the bottom!  Everything came out in one piece as well; no soil left in the pot.  I guess I assumed the size of the pot was WAY bigger than was needed, and that the short time the tomato would spend in said pot would not have allowed it to have roots that deep.  Obviously I was wrong!  I then took the pot and put the Mr. Stripey plant, which has been growing from seed, into it.  Since the Tumbling Tom plant used all that space, I figured the Mr. Stripey seedling would enjoy some extra room as well.  So far he seems to be loving his new home.  I am pretty sure he will love being in the ground even more.  As soon as he has some branches, in the ground he'll go!

And speaking of late bloomers, I put one of the remaining pumpkin seedings into a mound right off our porch.  Both pots that contained the extra pumpkin plants got knocked over by a naughty chipmunk.  I left the pots as they were since I wasn't going to be needing either plant.  Well, one of the plants died, but the other one not only didn't die, but it made flowers!  I felt bad for it, so I decided to plant it in the "sand box" next to our porch.  I had wanted to plant flowers there last year, and so I pulled out all the weeds and starting digging, only to find that below the small layer of gravel there was sand!  I also found sandbox toys, and a container for holding lost teeth shaped like a molar.  No teeth were inside, thankfully!

After finding these treasures last year, I went with plan B.  I already had a flower I wanted to plant there, so I just dug a hole in the sand, dumped in a bunch of soil, and planted the flower.  It did great, so that is where the pumpkin went this year.  I had some extra soil, so I gave it it's own mound.  At first the leaves, which were a bit yellow when I put it in the mound, started dieing.  But now there are new bright green leaves, and even the stem looks better!  I predict that it will be a bit late in it's production, but if we get an extended growing season like we did last year, there will be pumpkins into early October!

And speaking of the squash family, I was doing my normal walk around the perimeter of the garden before actually working in the garden, when I noticed a squash vine borer!  I was actually on the phone with my mom at the time (reception is better outside), so I didn't swear when I saw it, but she can attest I was rather upset and wanted to swear!  My eyes got as wide as they could and I probably had the look of wrath on my face.  I immediately reached for my scissors to cut the damn thing in half.  However, it managed to fall into a rather thick area of grass, and therefore escaped certain death.  I use the very evil 'cut in half' method on Japanese Beetles, because I don't want to spray all of my edible plants directly with a chemical, and because they tend to just sit there when I move in with the scissors.  Bad news for the bugs, but great news for my plants.

With the advent of the squash vine borer's appearance, and it's much swifter movements, I knew I needed more than scissors, so Tom and I heading to the Home Depot and got some Ortho Max spray that is safe for use on edible plants.  I then sprayed my zucchini plants, which is were I saw the bug, and will keep watching my pumpkins to see if I need to spray them too.  I really don't like to use chemicals unless I absolutely have too.  And one chemical I had to use again was the liquid fence spray.  On a separate occasion from the squash borer, I came out to the garden to find two rabbits inside the garden!  Luckily they did not do too much damage, but I immediately got the liquid fence spray and sprayed the perimeter of the garden when I was done working for the day.  Crossing my fingers that they stay away!

More photos of the garden's progress from July 1st!
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