It's All Spider-y Under There...

In one of my favorite episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, Barney and Gomer are working to rebuild a bandstand and Gomer doesn't want to go up under it because he is afraid of spiders...He says something like, "But Barney, it's all spidery under there."  To which of course Barney replies "Gomer, get down there with them spiders and start workin'!"

Well now I know exactly how Gomer feels and it's happening in my garden!  Last year when I raked all of the mulch up in the Fall, I placed it on a tarp in the yard for re-use.  We I've finally gotten all of it back out on the garden and it's FULL of spiders!  I mean thousands upon thousands of spiders.  From little tiny jumping spiders to giant ones as big as my hand (no lie, I've killed two that size so far.)  I beat the living crap out of them with my shoe.  I've put a question into my local extension service about getting rid of them.  I'm not for using tons of chemicals in the garden but they are stringing webs EVERYWHERE and just plain old freaking me out!  (I have identified the giant spiders as Wolf Spiders and they both were carrying egg sacs-I have NOT posted a picture because honestly they just flat out scare me!)

In other garden news-the tomatoes and peppers are coming along nicely and I think I will have enough for most of the neighbors.  

 

Something is continuing to decimate my eggplants, not really anything else just my 4 eggplants-see?

The green beans have started training up the lines from last year and I only have to help them out a little bit.  I did thin them again this weekend, it gets harder and harder to pull up plants the bigger they get!

The pink eyed peas are doing ok, some of the leaves are a little "shriveled" up, they seem to be growing this way.  This is my first year for these so I am not sure if this is normal or not.

And finally, the squash plants are growing nicely and it is almost time to start "attaching them" to the cages.  I think I will use some fabric strips instead of string.  I have a sack of (way too small) clothes going to the thrift store and I may just cut some of them up for tying purposes.

I was out of town for a week and very nervous about the garden-so I'm happy to update that everything (well except the spiders) is going good!

Some Hits and Misses...

Ah early May...seeds sprouting...nice weather (if you calls highs of around 90 nice-a little hot for my tastes.)  I wanted to hop in and post a garden update.  I hope to get some work done out there today, either before it hits 90 or after it cools down a little bit.  I have mostly good luck with seed sproutage and have already "thinned the herd" once.  It needs to be done again!

Some things are coming in like gangbusters-for example the zucchini...need to thin these again ASAP.

Other things are struggling-this below photo is the "regular cucumber" cage.  It isn't looking so hot.  It was the first set of seeds I planted around a cage and I think I just dug them too deeply.  I'm actually not a huge fan of regular cucumbers so I am debating planting any more seeds.  I probably shouldn't but I hate having something so bare looking.

The tomatoes are caged and doing well for the most part.

The peppers are coming along nicely too.

The okra is sort of bouncing back from the cold snap.  I'm going to give it til around Wednesday to look really good or it may come out and be replanted.

Finally the green beans, lima beans and pink eyed peas rows are filling in.  I still have a few gaps in the rows but I'm thinking once they are thinned again and continue to come in I should be fine with what I have in each area.

I have a few bare spots and I'm thinking about adding some watermelon, even though I have not had too much luck with them in the past.  The mulching is around 85% complete and I was able to re-use most of the mulch from last year.  In the future though I need to come up with a better process than scraping it all off, putting it in a pile on a tarp and then re-spreading it by the bucketful (whew.)  I have 20 more bags of mulch in the garage from when it was on sale a month or so back and that should complete the mulching (add that to the to-do list this week!)


All in all pretty good progress for only a couple of weeks post planting--