Family reunion, mole problems, and squash planting

Family reunion time

We went to the family reunion on Saturday.  Attendance was a bit sparse, but not bad.  It was a good time and plenty of good food!  We took the puppies in their cages.  They were well behaved, shock of shocks!  No barking (well, a little - but not bad) and no problems.  We were a bit concerned about the heat (was a hot day and no AC in the place) but we survived until after 4pm.  Then we decided to get the pups out of there since they weren't drinking or eating and Sugar seemed to be breathing shallow.  When we got back home though she perked up and all was well.

Corn still sparse.. why?  Moles!

While deweeding the brassicas I happened to look up and saw a mole chewing off a young corn plant! So many moles!  So few corn plants!  So we went shopping for mole "suppressants" at TSC.  All that I could find that looked promising was some poisonous "worms" and a solar powered sonic spike.

Mole suppressants

Three plantings and this is the only corn I have!  

OK - the first planting was with old seed and I don't think it germinated, but still!

So I placed the poison and the sonic spike and we will see what happens!  BTW, while planting the squash (see below) I discovered a dead mole  - but I don't know if it died from me stopping around or from the poison.

Tree protector replacement continues

I replaced the plastic tubes on all of the pecan trees and the rest of the paw-paws trees!  I bouhgt 2 100 foot rolls of fencing while at TSC and used a whole roll.  I have a few more trees to go so I will probably have a bit of fencing left.

Paw-paws are all caged now!

The pecans are actually looking pretty good!

All the pecans are caged now.  Good thing because there are SO many deer in this area!  In fact I chased a young fawn out of the weeds just next to these trees.

Deer safe?  For a while, maybe

"pond" spearmint is doing well

I trimmed around the pond spearmint - it looking good! I am hoping that this stuff takes off!

Orchard and vineyard care

I dusted the grape vines last weekend with sevin and sulfur.  Shortly afterward Connie warned me that Concord grapes were not safe to use sulfur on!  I looked it up and she was right.  I looked at the vines this weekend and think I did notice some damage (chlorosis - the leaves loose their greenness).  So this time I mixed up a batch of sevin and fungicide and oversprayed the vines, hopefully washing off the sulfur.

I finally got around to trimming off the base shoots around the trees.  While doing so  I noticed that I did indeed have a Japanese Beetle problem on some of the trees!  The Honey Crisp and one other variety seemed to be hit hard.  In fact, most of the trees didn't have any beetles - really just those tow varieties.  Weird.  I also notice some disease issues on some of the other trees though, so I sprayed the whole orchard with sevin and fungicide.  I also applied some more Roundup around the trees and various problem areas.

Fungicide, sevin spray on the trees  Trimmed the base shoots 

Roundup working - applied more where I missed

Good to see the smartweed dieing!

Hopefully this will help with the mole issues too since they wont be able to hide in the weeds!

Planted the Squash

I planted the winter squash in the corn patch and winter and summer squash in the tomato garden.  I just pulled back the plastic and planted several seeds in a hill.

All Winter squash here

Summer an winter squash here - I put the summer squash in the front.

Parrotia Tree

Tom and Julie brought a Parrotia Tree for me to plant.  The tree is supposed to have nice fall colors.  Its not a good time to plant, but not much else to do with it!  I hope it survives until the fall!