When Mother Nature Says NOPE!
All winter long I dram about the summer garden. I dream about the days of looking out my back window and seeing a forest of food out in the backyard. The amazing tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, squash, personal melons and more. I long to walk through the pathways and gaze upon the bees buzzing around the patches of zinnias nestled between all of amazing food growing. I LOVE my garden, it genuinely is my happy place. The garden is my classroom, therapy room, it’s my refuge from this cruel world we live in. It’s where my kids learn about where their food comes from, and how, if given the right conditions, anything can grow. Pretty magical right? Well not this year! This year mother nature said “NOPE, not this summer!”. This summer started off alright, temps weren’t crazy, but the rain wouldn’t stop. We literally had weeks of just continuous rain. Somedays it would just drizzle, others it would downpour, but either way it rained and rained. I knew I shouldn’t complain, I knew we needed the rain, and my garden was flourishing. Everything was growing rapidly and starting to really bloom like it always does mid spring. Then one day the rain finally stopped, and the heat started to creep in, which honestly I didn’t mind……at first. I typically love the heat, I love summer, being in the sun, working in the sun, and absorbing as much of it as I can get. I would rather be outside doing nothing in the summer then in my house, and it shows. The issue I am having this year, is the heat won’t let up, and I fully believe the rain has stopped forever. Here in SW Missouri we have had temps in the high 90’s to low 100’s for over a month and no rain at all where I live. Everything I have spent hours and even weeks caring for, nuturing, and watering is either on the brink or just completely fried from this heat. My beans, which I had planned on canning double what I did last year, have only provided enough for a couple of meals. The tomatoes have amazing fruit on the bottoms, but the further up you look the smaller and more scarce the fruit is. The heat and lack of rain has taken it’s toll on my usual jungle oasis. The only saving grace I did have was the fact we rednecked some shade cloth over our back trellises. My husband actually took some ground cover we had left over and angled it over the tomato trellis. To my excitement, it worked, and now I have many more tomatoes on the back trellises. With that said, it’s not all tomatoes and veggies. I am for the first time battling satan’s little minions aka Blister Bugs.
My husband is amazing when it comes to Redneck Engineering!! He made this awesome shade cloth for our tomatoes.
Blister Beetle
From the family Meloidae, secrete the blistering agent cantharidin, which is known to cause blisters when it comes into contact with human skin. This Hemolymph is often exuded in copious amounts when the beetle is pressed or rubbed. For more information about the Blister Beetle click HERE..
The Blister beetles are devouring the tomatoes worse than hornworms. They started off just eating my Calendula and then quickly invaded my entire in ground garden. They’re eating all of the bean plants, corn, tomato plants, calendula, and some have even made it into my garden beds. I’ve never had these pesky little devil worshipers in the past, and I’m worried they may end up like the squash bugs which just multiply every year. I am crossing my fingers this year is just an off year as far as the infestation of these blister heathens. I don’t know if anyone else has had this issue, if so let me know.
What has your garden faced this year? What were your struggles? What were your successes?