Trouble in my garden

Life is not without complications. Every summer I look forward to do a bit of gardening and I’m delighted when my efforts show beautiful results. This season my plants seem to struggle a bit. Some of it is my fault. First off, our ground is all clay so I have to add topsoil, fertilizer and compost to help out for those plants that don’t like acidy soil. On the west side of the house the flowerbed is of course shaded until early afternoon and then the sun bakes everything in it until sundown. It also gets beaten on windy days. Only the most hardy and common native plants thrive in this area. It is disappointing when not all perennials make it through the winter and I keep buying more plants every spring.

On the south side of the garage I have potted veggies that were doing good in previous years. This year not so much. We haven’t had any rain now for weeks and I have been out watering every other day. I think I overwatered as the zucchini plants started to show powdery mildew on the leaves. I have sprayed them with a diluted vinegar/water solution now twice and I hope it will remedy that problem. Also I had to cut off two zucchini that started to yellow on the top. My fault, I guess.

Then I noticed on the Slicer Tomatoes tiny black flies. Those are fungus gnats! I sprayed those with a horticultural oil solution. If it will help, I don’t know. If you think those are all my troubles, nope, all the bushes along the side of the garage have spidery fall webworms. Oh, for goodness sakes, that is a new one. I had been neglecting those shrubs because they usually don’t need much attention and just yesterday when I trimmed them I noticed these unwanted guests. 

But there is good news in the garden. This little blue spruce tree that had turned green over the winter has grown tremendously and shows off its blue needles.

There are always chores around the house and if I want to, I could be busy every day. So that is why I decided to take our large barbecue apart and give it a deep cleaning. Really? Yes I did and it was messy! 

Benno has his own chores or rather his hobby work on the boat. There are so many things he’s done lately but they all required parts that were not so easy to obtain. Amazon has us on their preferred customer list, I think and the delivery guys know now our address by heart.

In the travel trailer Benno installed a new converter that will automatically detect the battery source, i.e. from the traditional lead/acid or now lithium, it was an easy installation. We are planning to change to lithium batteries sometimes this year.

On the boat, the electric windlass and as well the bow thruster is now fully hooked up and rewired. Benno replaced the port and starboard control toggle switch for the bow thruster with a joystick, which make it easier to move the boat’s bow to the left or right (port or starboard) when manoeuvring in a tight marina quarter. 

At this time Benno finished the diesel polishing vane pump wiring, hooked it up to a 12v battery, got a couple jerry cans full of diesel from the gas station and I helped him priming the big Racor filter and water separating unit with diesel fuel. I hit the on-off switch and “Caramba” the beast worked. It sucked the diesel out off the jerry cans, ran it through the big filter apparatus and pumped it into the day tank. They call that “Fuel polishing”. The new fuel gauge persists to our dismay not to work, but Benno will for sure figure it out soon, and I will let you know in the next update what the problem was. 

It is strawberry season now here in Ontario and although I don’t have any in my garden, there are plenty in the stores reasonably priced. 

Thanks for visiting.