The Weekend Onslaught That Wasn’t

It’s been a few days since I posted, but it was because we went to Houston for a couple nights to see my parents for their 45th wedding anniversary (go Mom and Dad!!)

I was worried about the tomatoes while we were away as I assumed a flock of birds, a litter of raccoons or an army of worms would decimate the crops. Seems I was mostly wrong:

That was what the plants produced in two days, though two of those Celebrities (the large ones) I picked Friday night before we left as I assumed they’d be toast if I left them.

The only two issues were that, one, the stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs were having a FIELD DAY and I spent a miserable hour extricating them to the soapy swimming pool this evening. I say miserable because the mosquitoes were murderous and it was more humid than Houston out there. I dunked about 45 bugs, though some got away. I think this illustrates the benefit of inspecting the plants twice a day and dealing with bugs as they come up.

The second issue is one that I failed to grasp properly early on: these plants are vines. Healthy, hearty, robust vines with so much grow power in them they are taking over my area and the wimpy tomato cages I am using. So, along with bug extraction, I hammered some new bamboo poles in to give me something extra to tie off branches. Not perfect, and not pretty, but at least I can walk around the plants now.

I was also worried the hot weather would fry a lot of stuff, but I took care of that by setting the sprinkler system to run automatically at 4 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday for a bit each day.

All in all, I think the only things suffering now are my legs… need to wipe off the mosquito bodies and smears of blood. And dab them with some anti-itch goop.