After All These Years I'm Going To Have to Start Learning

Bob Bauer

September 02, 2019 (Last Updated: March 06, 2023) | Reading Time: 1 minutes

September 02, 2019

After all these years I'm going to have to start learning about using organic fertilizer. My fifth planting of corn is short, skinny and thin, with small five inches ears. I think the soil has been depleted of nitrogen. Two applications of compost a year is not building the soil like I thought it would..

It takes nitrogen to finish the decomposition of compost if it's not thoroughly done, and mine has always been applied unfinished. I've also noticed that my cantaloupe and honeydew melons are not full sized at maturity. I've stopped fertilizing them when the vines grow out beyond the mound because holding a two gallon watering can with fish emulsion away from my body is something I can't do anymore, so granulated, time release, organic fertilizer is my best option now..

September 03, 2019

The shadows are lengthening day by day, and there's a golden cast to the sunlight. The blackberries are drying on the vine and me and the bears are getting ready for hybernation. The Fall moves slowly for gardeners as ripening progresses, and we begin to plan the clean up of the sections that have completed..

The dew on the morning grass is a welcome sight but reminds us that it will soon be replaced by frost, and another gardening cycle will be finished. The hustle and bustle of getting the kids ready to go back to school detracts from the sadness of facing an ending summer, and the garden clean up ahead looks a bit overwhelming..

September 04, 2019

There were 7-8 green darner dragonflies criss crossing the garden yesterday with methodical precision and vengeance. They were a force of nature not to be interfered with and no other dragonflies showed up. The red, blue, and black and white dragonflies are smaller and out manuvered by the swarm of larger green darners so they found other places to hunt. I was hoping that whiteflies were the reason I had a squadron of preditors eagerly feasting, but it turns out they don't eat whiteflies..

Ladybugs and lacewing larvae are the whiteflies nemisis. Dragonflies eat not only mosquitoes but also gnats, ant alates, flies, aphid, and at times bees and butterflies. They scoop them out of the air with their legs and can eat their weight in insects in 30 minutes..

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