Some garden notes: a new (to me) way to avoid squash vine borers. Shifting the words and moving the goalposts on climate change.
Some quick garden notes:
I wanted to share a couple quick things I've learned or tried.
I have been deviled by squash vine borers for years now. I've tried a lot of things over the years and rather than give you a catalog of failures or successes that came at a HUGE cost of time, let me share a procedure that has worked pretty well up to now.
The overall idea is that I can't, without entirely covering the plant stop the squash vine borers. So the procedure I've developed is to try and get the plant healthy enough to still produce DESPITE the damage.
So, I'll ...
--get the squash strong by vine borer season (Mid-June or so) by starting the seedlings in the house and getting them out as soon as frost is gone. Doing this means they're well established and strong by the time the bugs attack.
--help the plant establish auxiliary roots so that even as the borers are eating in one part of the stem the plant has another pathway for water and nutrients to get in. For vining habit squashes, this means going out every week or so as they grow and burying the leaf joints in dirt or with mulch and then watering sometimes along the vine. For bush types, hill up some dirt around the stem as it flops over.
--go out and wipe off the stem and vine every so often to remove eggs (you'd also be wise to wipe off the fruit--those damned bugs lay eggs there too and it ruins your ability to store the fruit long term).
--watch for obvious signs of bug damage on a particular leaf (look for drooping on a day where you know it has ample water) and cut the leaf off before the grub works its way into the stem.
These things put together are reasonable in terms of the time required (and to be honest the last two I didn't even do this year and did fine on my harvest--I had all I needed or wanted with some to give away).
A new idea occurred to me this year, however. What if, since summer squash plants are quick to mature, I started some summer squash seeds indoors in mid summer and banked on hitting the sweet spot in the year where I would avoid the vine borers but still get fruit before the first frost?
I tried it this year and have had lots of luck. That's the photo of the squash plant above (a variety called cue ball so they're spherical).
I started them around the middle of July indoors. Got them potted up once and started hardening them off. Once they were hardened off I transplanted. This would have been the first or second week of August.
While they were small, I covered them with floating row cover (future attempts at mitigating vine borer damage may include having my squash plants under row cover almost all the time) and let them grow til they were too large to fit (late August) and now they're out in the open and making fruit.
If you've been having trouble with vine borers, you might consider starting some quick-maturing squash from seed in late summer so you can put them out prior to frost and avoid the bugs.
The second thing is something I learned. In the other photo attached you'll see some blueberries.
That grew in late summer.
Now, if you know blueberries you'll know why this is remarkable. Blueberry bushes fruit on growth from the previous year. After the horrible winter last year, all the new growth had died so I resigned myself to no blueberries this year.
Then this one bush fruited and looks like they'll mature before a frost.
I emailed with someone who knows blueberries and they said that some varieties will fruit in Fall without NOT fruiting in the next Spring.
So, there you have it. Some blueberries will fruit in Fall and I apparently lucked into buying a variety that will. Now we know.
As to what determines whether they will or will not fruit a second time, I have no idea. I'm just going to roll with it and see if it happens again. Was somewhat painful because with the recent heat, I've had to really stay up on watering it. Underwatering blueberries (this I do actually know) means a lot fewer and a lot smaller berries. Had it not set fruit, I would have only done maintenance watering.
Shifting the words and moving the goalposts on climate change.
We can lower greenhouse gas emissions right now, but I (like the folks at Doomberg who are interviewed below) sincerely question if that is the goal anymore.
That is, I think that I agree with the contention that the goal has shifted from "getting rid of carbon emissions" to ...
1. "no more fossil fuels of any kind"
2. "no nuclear either"
I heard recently that liberal and progressive thought-centers and work shifted from working people over to academia, and, as part of this shift, became less about workers and working conditions and more about words (what else do academicians produce?).
One consequence, due to an academician's felicity with language, was the left recognizing and capitalizing on the power of said words.
When I listened to the interview linked first below and then read the post by the folks at Doomberg (also linked below) that idea pinged back into my memory.
That's essentially what the Doomberg people contend: that the environmentalists have progressively ratcheted up their rhetoric about climate change in order to keep us all stirred up.
That is, to keep us all hopping around and afraid, thus more willing to abide by the strictures they propose as the solution to the escalating crisis.
As evidence, they offer the fact that (and, if you stop and think for a second, you'll note the truth) the most rabid environmentalists are not talking anymore about cutting carbon emissions, they are talking about not generating any.
They go through some examples below which I'll leave it to you to listen up and/or read, but Colorado has plenty examples of its own to share.
I have posted about the fuss environmentalists have kicked up about including hydrogen in natural gas as a way to reduce emissions. This doesn't transition us fast enough.
I have posted about the fuss environmentalists have kicked up about any technology that shows up here in Colorado that could remove and or sequester carbon dioxide from the air. Again, this is just enabling more fossil fuel use and that's not what we want.
What the most rabid environmentalists want is an all-or-nothing switch. I don't know that I'm as willing as the Doomberg people to speculate as to why, but their actions speak loudly and clearly to the fact that it ain't about emissions no more.
It's now about complete societal change and nothing else will do.
My question to them would be, if the kind of change you propose is not possible or not possible on your timetable, what would you propose we do?
Ought we to break our backs and suffer for falling short?
https://koacolorado.iheart.com/featured/ross-kaminsky/content/2023-08-28-doomberg-the-left-is-not-actually-looking-for-climate-solutions/
