When Hornworms Attack

Yesterday morning I headed out to pick some peppers and I found this.

Sad leafless pepper plant.

As I'm looking around for the culprit, my son hollers that it's time for him to go to school.  It took me until the afternoon to get back out there and I found the bugger.  It was a Tomato Hornworm, who's apparently not as picky as the name suggests.  I grabbed it, after getting some gloves and nippers because it gives me the heebie jeebies, and tossed it to the chickens.  Who were very happy.  And then I decided to check the tomatoes, because what are the odds there's just one in the yard?

Not very good.

Dot got that one.

And had to run because the others wanted it too.

I finally stopped taking them one at a time.

The best Hornworm is the one getting peck by a chicken's beak.

I found over a dozen last night.  Various sizes, but there were quite a few that were really big.  This guy below was a little one.  And I happened to catch him shedding.  He was almost done by the time I got the camera, but I thought it was kinda interesting that the poker sheds too.  And then I fed him to the chickens.

Live and let live?  Not on my tomato plants.

Soft Boiled Eggs a la Compost, Anyone?

The compost was hot enough to start cooking the egg.  Soft-boiled?

 Why, oh why would we through a whole egg in the compost you might ask?  Because on Saturday I noticed these...

FYI- the next three photos are gross.  Why I even looked at the bird poo close enough to notice the white bits moving is beyond understanding even for me.  Although I guess it makes me a good momma hen for catching what could have become a big problem.

See the white bits?

See how they move?

Yuck.

So after I realized my eyes weren't playing tricks on me I ran inside and hopped onto some of our favorite chicken sites to see if anyone had posted questions or comments about something similar.  And they had, though there was disagreement over whether it was round worm or tape worm given it's very un-wormlike appearance in the poo.

 Either way, I had to get to the feed store to see if they had anything since they'd be closed the next day and I wasn't going to just let it go until Monday, 'cause ewww!  We gave them the medicine Sunday, and frankly I'm not sure how it's doing since I took the above photos today and the bits are still moving.

As for the eggs, we're not supposed to eat them for two weeks.  It's such a waste.  I feel like the chickens are watching my every move as I collect their eggs and head to the compost.

You put them WHERE?!?!

How could you?

Huh?

In and Out

In:

We've been processing.

That's right.  We already had a pumpkin.  I cooked it on the grill.

We're saving part of it for later, and using some for a carrot/pumpkin soup tonight.

Zucchini and cucumber pickles.

Out:
I realized there's been a lot we've done here and there that I haven't written about.  The potato plants sagged over, so we dismantled the plateau.  We got a few potatoes out of it, and they were yummy!  The bulk of our summer squashes were decimated by aphids.  There were just so many that we pulled them up and sent them to the trash.  We still have the two on the end, one of which was producing the best zucchinis, and we always have the orchard to the northwest that we can stop by to supplement our needs.  Since our pumpkin was so early, we decided to put a couple more seed down to see if we can get another one before Halloween.  And since there was room, we put in a couple of more summer squash seeds, just in case...

Sunflower from the County Fair.

Carrots aplenty in our yard.

I was thinking about how we need to watch for the leaf-footed stink bugs...

...when I pulled the camera away from my face and noticed this little bugger.

 We squish them when we can.  Powder or spray them when we can't.  These little buggers fly away if you don't get them the first time, but we did notice a herd of newborns and we got out the powder and gave them a big puff.  Hopefully that wipes most of them out.  I hate when they dig into the blossom end of the pomegranates.  Yuk.

Ivory Soap to the Rescue

Our problem with the eggs on the underside of our squash leaves has been quashed.  We took some leaves over to the Master Gardeners Orchard and the lovely lady suggested spraying a mix of Ivory soap and water on them.  Each one.  Tedious, but worth it as the leaves are recovering.  Farmer Mike was dousing the cucumber leaves this morning.  Hopefully we can keep it better controlled now.

Garden Under Siege

Photos of our recent issues in the garden.  We don't know what they all are caused by, but we intend to find out.  There are Master Gardeners who go to local farmers markets and we plan to take samples to them to see if they know what's going on.