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Monday, May 31, 2010

Picking and canning peas


 This has been a slow chill out weekend for us. Amoy came to visit and spent the night. I think she is as lost without Rob as we are knowing he is so far from home. She is a nice pleasant lady to have around. Not to mention we get to spoil the lil grand dog. lol We didn't do much outside today with the heat and humidity. Late this evening we went to the garden to check on things and pick peas. I did not think they would produce as well as they have so far. I took enough baskets to pick maybe a half bushel. We pick a bushel or maybe a little more. If I had thought there would be that many I would have went out and pick them earlier so I wouldn't be all night canning peas. But I didn't, so here I am canning peas at this hour. And there will be 2 cannings of them. my canner will do 14 quarts at a time and I have 25 quarts in jars now. I might get in bed by 3am.
We had a light shower of rain this evening also, but only enough to cool the night air a bit. The garden stuff is growing really well but dang the bugs this year. I am still battling the potato beetles and now I have noticed that the little bean plants have some bean bugs too. So I am off early in the morning to spray all them again. I have read several times that nicotine is toxic to bugs. I have already used a strong pesticide on the taters. But I did purchase a couple packs of chewing tobacco last week and set it to soak in water to extract the nicotine. This time spraying I am going to mix the nicotine with some water and spray a few rows of potatoes with just the nicotine spray and see if this makes a difference. If it does, guess what I will be growing next year. This is going to be my experiment for the season. I will post back to let you all know how it effects the bugs if at all. I do know it stinks to high heavens.
So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

4 comments:

Mary said...

I think I've heard someplace that nicotine can also transmit a virus to some plants--I'm thinking it was tomatoes but I can't recall...

Anyhow maybe do a 'looksee' on google before you use it alot.

My your canning canning kitchen looks nice! I bet you're enjoying it.

stella said...

Hi Mary, yeh i have read that smokers and people who work in tobacco can transmit a mosaic virus to tomatoes in the veggie garden. BUt dang I had to chance it will all the blasted tater bugs or we wont have taters again.
Thanks, I do love my canning kitchen. Nice to sit out there at night and do the canning and surf the net while the canner is going. lol And I am not in the house making noise and keepin the guys up where they have to get up and go off to work the next morning. i love it. Kinda like muh own lil poutin house. lol

Jen said...

Stelly,
Those pea look so pretty. So glad you got yer cannin'/poutin' house in full operation.

~"jenny"

stella said...

Hey jenny, dang those peas looked even better once I got em in the jars. Them be good this winter when there is a big snow on the ground. Will remind us of summer.