Black-Eyed Susans Make a Grand Entrance!

I am a little bummed it's already August, but my flowers continue to bloom and will through probably the end of September! Lots of time yet! This weekend, my black-eyed susans bloomed! Love it!

Black-eyed susans make their entrance! (gnomeknowsbest.blogspot.com)

Organic Solutions for Powdery Mildew

Lately I've been trying out the
ready-to-apply Natria neem oil
solution. Not as cost-effective as
buying concentrate, but easy!

I've relied on neem oil nearly exclusively to treat garden problems over the past two years after hearing of it from a friend on, where else, Facebook.

It's an insecticide and a fungicide, and pretty darn effective when applied early on in a problem in the garden.

I went out to my garden the other day after not visiting for a day, and discovered the rain and cooler weather we've been having had contributed to a breakout of powdery mildew.

Not the best picture of powdery mildew, but here's one of my cucumber leaves. You'll see it looks like a bunch of powdery spots. When it spreads, it eventually looks like someone put powdered sugar on your plants:

The start of powdery mildew on my cucumber leaves.
Left untreated, it will spread. I'm trying to prevent that.

I trimmed as many of the leaves affected off the plant as possible, and then threw them out and washed my hands. I probably should have been more careful about where the pruned leaves fell, as I'm afraid I may have helped the airborne spores spread. Anyway, I then sprayed with neem oil the affected plans and nearby plants. But after doing some research, I've decided that while neem oil is effective against powdery mildew, it may not be the most effective treatment.

Birds Eating My Seedlings ... Drunken Dragonfly to the Rescue!

Or at least that's the hope! My man and I went to the Flower Bin here in Longmont a couple weeks ago in search of both veggies to harvest in the fall and for something that would hopefully deter birds from my garden.

As I've written before, birds were eating my lettuce seedlings, making me think I needed to grow them a little larger and transplant them into the garden. But first I wanted to see if I could find something to deter them from eating them in the first place.

We found just one thing that was shiny (I have read in many places online that hanging CDs from a tree nearby, etc helps) and that I actually wanted in my garden: a Drunken Dragonfly made by Paul's Metal Petals.

It's made of silverware (cool, right?) and seems to be reflective enough to keep birds away. I only have anecdotal evidence, but the seeds I planted the same day that I put the garden ornament in the ground have turned into seedlings and have not yet been eaten by birds.

Check it out:

What Can I Do with All These Cucumbers?!?

My cucumbers are thriving in my garden this year! I think I've said this before, but I attribute that to giving them plenty of space and having a nice trellis for them to climb (and already overtake!).

Exhibit 1: Discovered this cucumber, hidden and overgrown,
the other day. Here it is next to a couple of perfectly sized zucchinis!

But I'm harvesting a couple cucumbers a day, and I'm not seeing an end to that. So what in the world will I do with them, aside from sharing with my co-workers? Zucchini is easier - lots of options to mix zucchini in with any number of dishes. (Here are a few of my favorite zucchini recipes ...)

One of the great benefits of gardening is that you suddenly have a bunch of produce, and you have to come up with creative ways to use it! It's great motivation because you certainly don't want to throw it out and while I don't mind sharing produce, I would like to use as much of it as possible at my own house (until we get sick of it!).

So I'm on a mission to find some new cucumber recipes to try. I'm going to link to them here, and then try them out over the next week or two. Then I'll let you know how they went!

Here are three cucumber recipes that go beyond just throwing them in a salad (which I will also do). These are all from allrecipes.com, one of my favorite places to find good recipes, mostly because the review system is excellent! I often learn more from the reviewers than from the people submitting the recipes.

Rediscovering Beauty in the Front Yard

One of the fringe benefits of cleaning up a flower garden is rediscovering the beautiful flowers you actually have. We inherited the landscaping in the front of our home last year when we moved in, and the flowers are set such that something is always blooming! It's the best way to do it. Different flowers bloom at different times of year, no matter where you're at, and I've really enjoyed learning about the ways of the non-edible gardening world.

Yesterday I did a long overdue cleanup, trimming bushes and getting rid of flowers that bloomed weeks ago that have since dried up.

I don't pay that area of my front yard a lot of attention during the week, so I was pleased to see some beautiful flowers currently blooming! Here's a taste.

Inspired By ... Midsummer Planting

I have a gap in my garden right now, and I really want to fill it. Being relatively new to gardening, I wasn't sure what veggies I could plant midsummer for harvest in the fall.

I found this handy chart from the University of Minnesota Extension. The bottom line: I already knew I could do lettuce and kale and cabbage.

I don't have a ton of space, but enough that I can try a few new veggies out for some fresh fall treats, and add to my garlic patch (a small area of my garden) for garlic harvest next year.

I'm thinking I'll try out cauliflower and beets, both of which can handle a little frost in addition to planting more kale and lettuce under my cucumber trellis. (Only a few of my previous lettuce seeds actually are resulting in actual seedlings.)

Why Tomatoes May Flower ... But Not Set Fruit

My co-worker asked me today if I had any idea why her heirloom tomato plant was flowering and had been for a few weeks, but she had not yet seen fruit start to form.

I wasn't sure, but encouraged her to feed the plant if she hadn't (it's growing in a container, which makes it even more important to fertilize) as a starting point.

I did some research tonight on tomatoes and their fruit-setting ways and found two things, both highlighted in this article from Bonnie Plants, but also noted by other authors: