September 11, 2019
Some gardens look and feel enchanted. It's as if there is more there than meets the eye. You can imagine gnomes and fairies hiding from you, and you peer around expecting movement in the shadows. Incorporating a few large moss covered rocks at the entryway of your garden, with some ground cover and low growing perennials around them, sets the mood of discovery. Having curved pathways with small bush type perennials incorporated between the planting zones, helps encourage the sense of mystery that shadows and shade provide..
What you can't see is where the imagination takes over, and can outweigh the visuals in significance. The knowledge that there is always life forms watching you, like tree frogs, aphid, birds, squash bugs and wasps keeps you from feeling alone and makes you more observant. "No less than the trees and stars, you have a right to be here"..
September 12, 2019
Yellow jackets are not at all welcome at your outdoor meals this time of year, but are a tremendous asset in the garden. They are preditors to almost all garden insect pests, and favor cabbage moths caterpillars, so I am glad to see them. Like tree frogs they keep you from having to use insecticide to produce an abundant harvest. They invoke fear due to their painful sting but are rarely harmful. Their nests are usually not in the garden so they have nothing to protect..
Paper wasps, on the other hand, make nests in bushes and greenhouses, and will defend them with bites and stings, both of which are painful. Getting rid of the nests is easy though. I blast them with a water shower. They are great preditors of harmful insects so I will tolerate their presence until they become threatening..
September 13, 2019
We've had a few cool, rainy days and the corn stopped ripening. I am amazed at how temperature sensitive it is. I would think that once the ears were pollinated they would forge ahead with gusto in the completion of their reproductive task. The cooler temperatures decrease their respiration rate, which reduces the amount of water flowing up from the roots..
Maybe the nutrients from the soil, that are needed for ripening the kernels, are in the water that has slowed it's assent. Maybe photosynthes slowing down caused the ripening rate to decline by reducing the energy supply. Maybe all the veggies ripening slowed down, but it's most noticeable in the corn..
