Last rows of sweet corn got cut down and fed to the hogs now we wait for the soil to dry out so we can plant buckwheat into that area to keep weeds down and to be ‘green manure’ when we cut it down.

3 inches of rain caused my tomato alley to collapse. The boys helped me set it up and reinforce it with more steel T-posts. The plants were heavily damaged by all the trauma, but I’ll call it a ‘good pruning’ and harvest every tomato with thankfulness.  When plants get stressed, they will break down their sugars and mature faster in an effort to reproduce before they die. This means that the rain, the stress of falling, and then many dreary and wet days in a row has allowed the blight to progress rapidly. I was previously holding the blight at bay with my homemade peroxide spray (here) but now I am going to let it run its course because it will help ripen any green tomatoes before our looming September 15 frost date.

The potatoes I planted late June are struggling too, I lost about half of them to soft rot and now the Colorado potato beetles are relentless, (due to the plant being stressed) and the boys are picking off hundreds of bugs each day. I am thankful for the 150 pounds of potatoes we harvested from our early planted potatoes in case the late crop doesn’t bushel. 

Weeds that pop up in late summer go to seed so quickly and need to be removed as soon as I see them or I risk them dropping hundreds of seeds into my garden for me to deal with next spring. The shortening of the day’s triggers survival instincts in many weed species, causing them to shift from vegetative growth to reproductive growth. I am happy to report that the buckwheat has been doing an excellent job at creating a shade canopy and suppressing weeds where we planted it.