De-weeding continues. Japanese beetles and varmint onslaught!

EEk! Bugs!  and weeds, and varmints..

As I suspected would happen when I was leaving last weekend, bugs have gone crazy this week! Japanese beetles all over the place!  Eating elderberries, grapes, and cherry trees quite voraciously.  I went to the hardware store to get some stuff to get the outdoor spigot to work (Sugar got car sick again on the way up) and I picked up some more Sevin and some new corn seeds (the old seeds just are not germinating or just plane were attacked by crows an other varmints).   Some of the corn that was up was partially eaten and some even pulled out!  I suspect crows as this is their MO.  Many of the elderberry plants looked like they were eaten off by deer but maybe that was partially due to Japanese Beetles as well.  Lots of damage to the sweet potato plants as well, although I am fairly certain that potato damage was from varmint, not the beatles.

Beetles are even eating the wild roses bushes! (yay!)

Still lots of de-weeding to do - but the strawberries at least are intact

No new weeds in the berry patch this week.  The wood mulch seems to do the trick

We need to get those onions clear of weeds too!

The shell beans grew nicely this week,  

I am hoping that they outpace the weed germination so far that I wont have to cultivate them!

Dog-fence gate

I needed to put a gate into the dog area so that I could mow.  I just used the auger to drill a post hole and stuck a new post in.  Then I just cut a piece of fencing to fit the gap and "twist tied" it in place.  I don't have an actual gate, just a fencing panel really.  If it looks like it is having issues I will make a "real" gate for it later.  For this weekend it worked great - the dogs didn't stress it at all.

"gate" between the two posts so i can get the  mower in

I cleaned up the wooded area next to the dog pen.

Spigot repair and hose hook up

As I mentioned, Sugar got car sick again on the trip up.  I decided to save Katherine some hassle and repair the outdoor hose spigot (some crazy person on a riding mower destroyed the handle on the spigot last).  At first I was sure I was going to have to replace the outdoor spigot entirely - ugh!  But when I looked closer I saw that I just needed to replace the faucet handle!    So I popped into the hardware store and got a universal handle replacement kit (yes - there is such a thing!) as well as a spray nozzle for the hose.

New handle in place!  Much nicer than the old one!

Further progress on removing the plastic tree-tubes

I used the wire fence left over from the dog-fence to make tree cages for the black walnut, butternut and paw-paws.  I got all of the black walnut and butternut trees "caged" but still need more fencing for the paw-paws.  

Black walnuts all caged now!  I hope they "crinkle"

Butternuts all caged now too!  They look fairly healthy

Looks like I have about 11 more cages to go for paw-paws.  I figure I need about 44 more feet of fencing to complete the caging.

Grape vine care

I spent a considerable portion of a day (3-4 hours) trimming the weeds away from the grape vines and tieing up the new runners.  Good news is that the older vines seem to be growing nicely an I see little to no rust on the leaves!  Not only that, but the concors have quite a few little grapes on them!  After I trimmed the grass an tied up the runners (and trimmed a few wayward runners) I sprayed the with sevin and general purpose fruit tree disease spray.  I wanted to hit them with some sulfur but the weather reports called for rain on Monday which would wash off the sulfur too soon.  I will try to get them next time.  Some of the wine grapes are getting rust pretty bad.  

Seeing some rust on the new vines!  Need to treat with sulfur soon

As you can see, the new vines aren't seeing much growth as the old vines.  Should I side dress with blood meal again?

All trimmed and tied!

You can really see how much better the concords are doing compared to the other varieties!

Sevin

I also sprayed the hazelnut trees and the cherry trees with sevin to try to save them from the Japanese beetles.  I put up a couple beetle traps too.

Hazelnuts sprayed

Two new beetle traps

Trimming

I continue to try to stay ahead of the weeds!  This weekend I trimmed around the pines and the elderberries next to the big patch.

I need to put wood mulch on these elderberries yet.

Replanted corn - yet again!

AS mentioned earlier, I found that much of my corn was either not germinating or pulled/bitten off. So I bought some short season corn and planted them in between the few stalks that came up from the previous plantings.   I also covered the unplanted areas with black plastic to knock the weeds down in prep for planting winter squash in the upcoming weeks.  When I planted this time, I put in blood meal and planted about 3-5 seeds per hole!

Cleaned up sweet potatoes and put own more plastic

The sweet potatoes were showing signs of damage from varmints - maybe rabbits?  Nonetheless, most were still doing well but getting a bit crowded by the weeds.  I de-weeded the sweet potatoes and put down black plastic over the unplanted area of the garden to keep the weed tops from going to seed.

I de-weeded the sweet potatoes.  Some of these are starting to vine!

The tomatoes are mostly doing ok.  They are near the bottom for the picture.

Elderberries are looking good!

While many of the berries are still blooming, quite a few have little berries on them! 

Box turtle

We found this little guy trying to crawl through the dog-fence compound.  He seemed determined. Katherine finally moved him to the other side of the compound, assuming that's where he was headed.