Grasshoppers in My Garden

So the one good thing that may have occurred due to the crazy rain we had the last couple of weeks is that the grasshoppers I discovered a couple days before it started seem to have disappeared. Will they come back? I don't know. I hope not.

Here's a little guy I found on my pepper plant that has produced a total of, yes, one pepper all summer. Miraculously, it started flowering again a few days after the rain stopped. I don't know if it's coincidental that I also haven't seen a grasshopper lately ... I have seen them in other parts of my yard.

A grasshopper on my bell pepper plant ... look in the middle.

Grasshoppers may be the reason my fall lettuce seedlings keep getting eaten (they like their lettuce).

So what to do?

Weeds After the Flooding

As damage goes, I didn't get much from the recent Colorado floods. I have very little to complain about - my home is on one of the highest points in Longmont and I don't live near the river that splits the town in half.

The storm came, hung out over Colorado and would not go away. The results for the state were tragic - hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

As a result of the week's worth of rain, that just wouldn't stop, my garden had far more weeds than actual edibles. A literal blanket of baby weeds, just starting to peek their heads out. It gave me a peek into what happens if you over-water (to an extreme) your garden.

And also because of the record rain, I could not get out there in the garden to fight them effectively.

I finally got the chance to do some weed mitigation right before I left for California. I didn't do a stellar job. They were all little weeds, so I just took the hoe and scraped them up. It's to be seen how effective that was, but at least for a little while they'll stop hogging water and nutrition from the plants I'm trying to squeeze a decent harvest out of!

It's yet to be seen if the excess water rotted roots or even some of the root veggies I'm growing. It did cause some tomatoes to tear for too much water (apparently tomatoes don't know when to stop drinking ...) and I have a feeling the nutrition that was in the soil has probably seeped away. I will need to do a final fertilizing when I get home from California.

Here's one blog I found looking at what you should do after a heavy rain: 9 Gardening Tips to Do After a Heavy Rain

Roasting Hot Peppers

One of the things going well for me this year in my garden are my mucho nacho peppers. There are plenty coming off the one plant I have. I harvested a handful a week or two ago and roasted them in the broiler.

Here are some directions on allrecipes to roast peppers in your broiler.

I took the five peppers, laid them out on the pan, brushed them with oil and popped them in the broiler. When one side started turning black, I flipped them. Then I let them cool completely and threw them in the freezer, with plans to use them down the road in the same recipes I have previously used canned chiles for!

Plenty of Zucchini for Zucchini Crisps and Even More Zucchini Muffins!

What to do with all my zucchini?
Bake, of course!

It's been awhile since I have posted to this blog. Have no fear: I've been keeping busy with the garden - some good, some bad things.

But through it all,zucchini has been there.

Of course, not as much zucchini as last year. My one zucchini plant has consistently produced enough of the veggie to harvest one to two a week. Sometimes more.

I've made A LOT of zucchini muffins this year. And my husband and his sister, who stayed with us for a bit this summer, ate them all up. As I've shared on this blog before, this recipe is my favorite for zucchini muffins. But I've made a few adjustments: