Pam, Usually when the aphids show up here, masses of lady bugs arrive about 7-10 days later and start gobbling them up. Oddly this year we have tons of lady bugs early and no aphids yet. It is possible the lady bugs are controlling the aphids before I ever even see them. Are aphids a regular problem there or is this out of the ordinary? Louise Riotte used to recommend dusting agricultural lime on plants infested with aphids, but since our soil here is already so alkaline, I've never used lime for them. I think planting and covering up the plants you mentioned would be fine. However, you still need to check the plants daily for aphids underneath the covering. Nothing would be worse that having aphids multiplying under the row cover since the row cover could prevent beneficial insects from reaching the aphids. The row cover will provide decent wind protection and, obviously, the heavier the row cover, the more protection it provides. Row cover might protect the plants adequately from rain. It just depends on how heavy the rain is. We usually don't get heavy enough rain here at our house in mid-spring to pound tomato plants to a pulp. By the time we are warm enough for violent thunderstorms with heavy rain to develop, the plants usually are big and strong and generally remain undamaged. When I put tomato plants in the ground, I immediately hammer a stake into the ground close to each plant and use zip ties to hold the plant up close to the stake. This protects the plants from strong winds and the occasional heavy rainstorm. Normally I cage at planting time as the cages will give some hail protection, but this year we put hoops over the rows of tomatoes and covered the hoops with chicken wire and with heavy duty deer fencing. Now that the plants are growing well, I need to remove the hoop coverings in the next few days and get the cages around the plants while the plants are still a manageable size. In some past years, I wrapped each tomato cage in 4 or 6 mm plastic on the same day I put the plants in the ground, in effect turning each cage into a mini greenhouse. I would remove the plastic as soon as the plants reached it so that hitting the plastic wouldn't slow their growth or make the plants misshapen. This works really well but is very labor-intensive. My dad used to put #10 vegetable cans (he got them from the lunch ladies at our school cafeteria back then) around each small tomato plant when he planted them. He'd cut the bottom off the cans and work them a couple of inches into the soil so they wouldn't blow away. By the early 1980s he was using 5-gallon buckets in the same way, but cutting the bottoms off of them was a PITA. He also sometimes used black nursery pots the same way. By the time the buckets, cans or pots were removed from the plants, the worst spring winds had ended. Lots of gardeners here in my neighborhood use black nursery pots or 5-gallon buckets the same way he did, and on some recent cold nights I saw big molasses feed tubs turned upside down and lined up in a row in a garden. I bet they had been placed over tomato plants for frost protection. The main way I protect tomato plants from wind or rain is by hardening them off well in heavy wind exposure after they've already had significant wind exposure indoors from a fan. I try to get them strong enough before they go into the ground so I don't have to worry much about severe storms hurting them. Oddly, when I started hardening them off this spring, it was not nearly as windy as usual. I remember complaining to Tim that the March winds were not strong enough. I felt like the plants were not as strong as usual at planting time. We did finally get our strong winds -- in late April and early May. However, the tomato plants tolerated the winds just fine. This has been such a challenging planting season. I feel like I am so far behind on warm-season planting, but at least the cool-season plants have had the kind of weather they like. It is not yet a bad pest year here. So far this year the only pests I have found doing damage in the garden are 2 army worms (one on a potato plant and one on a lambs quarters plant I was pulling out of a bed), 2 cabbage loopers and one cutworm. The garden is full of birds every day and I assume they are taking care of a lot of the pests. Ever since we hit 91 degrees last week (before dropping into the 20s and 30s a few nights later), grasshoppers (older ones, not nymphs) have just appeared out of nowhere. Yesterday I found some fairly newly hatched grasshoppers ( about 1/8" long or maybe even a smidgen smaller) and one very small potato leafhopper. Well, cucumber beetles have been around all spring, but our fields always are full of them and there isn't much I can do about them. For every one I kill, 100 more appear, so I just don't even bother trying to control them. Aphids usually are not an issue here except for pea aphids some years, though not this year, on the sugar snap peas and for green aphids on the Piricicaba broccoli (and only on this one variety--it is an aphid magnet). If aphids are a huge issue, you could buy and release lady bugs. Also, keep an eye on your soil's nitrogen levels. Aphids often flock to plants that are growing in high-nitrogen soils. Dawn

Jay, It is a truly amazing list and I hope the weather gives you a break and allows for some good fruit set. All my spring tomatoes have been in the ground for some time---some planted in April and some planted in May, and of course, the few I plant in containers in February for earliest tomatoes. Those extra-earlies were yanked out of the containers in late May and replaced with varieties I like better and needed to plant someplace since the ground was still so wet in the spot where they otherwise could have been planted. The earlies weren't anything special--I think they were Better Bush, Bush Goliath, Early Girl and Grape---and they did their job--giving us ripe tomatoes in April and May while we waited for the in-ground plantings to start producing. These are the spring plants I ended up with. The plants listed survived late freezes, 18" or 19" of rainfall in 5 weeks, high winds in the 30s-40s and gusting into the 50s, etc. After the kind of spring weather we had, I just feel lucky to have tomato plants that did survive. This year, I have cut back drastically on both the number of plants and number of varieties, having struggled with drought so desperately last year. I choose to take 4 rows out of tomato/pepper production and plant them with broccoli and potatoes because I felt like whatever rain might fall would fall during prime time for cool-season veggies. So far, that has seemed like a good decision. Although we'll have a lot fewer tomatoes/peppers overall, we'll have tons of broccoli (in the middle of the harvest right now) and lots of potatoes too. After years of trying dozens of new (to me) heirlooms every year, I've actually reversed and have been trying many more new (to me) hybrids the last 3 years. And I have been trying to "pare down" the heirloom list to only the best performers, planting more of the proven varieties that produce good yields for us and less of the heirlooms that may or may not. I'll never stop trying different heirloom varieties, but I am trying to go more and more with great producers (both heirloom and hybrid) and less with the testing of new varieties. So, here's my pared-back, scaled-down list of tomatoes that have been planted and which have survived so far in 2009: IN CONTAINERS: 1. Red Defender 2. Scarlet Red 3. Scarlet Red 4. Livingston's Gold Ball 5. Mountain Princess 6. Momotaro 7. Chocolate Stripes 8. Indian Stripes 9. Red Defencer 10. Red Defender 11. Tropic 12. Moreton 13. Homestead 24 14. Sophie's Choice 15. Tropic 16. Moreton 17. Viva Italia 18. Sioux 19. New Big Dwarf 20. Box Car Willie 21. Glacier 22. San Marzano Redorta 23. New Big Dwarf 24. Black Plum 25. Viva Italia 26. Black Krim 27. Aunt Ruby's German Green IN THE GARDEN: 28. Tess's Land Race Currant 29. Sweet Million 30. Snow White 31. Grape 32. Gold Ball 33. Black Cherry 34. Dr. Carolyn 35. Rose Quartz 36. Ildi 37. Better Bush 38. Yellow Cherry 39. Yellow Pear 40. Snow White 41. Ildi 42. Snow White 43. Rose Quartz 44. Black Cherry 45. Black Cherry 46. Jet Star 47. Ramapo 48. Indian Stripe 49. Indian Stripe 50. Brandy Boy 51. Brandy Boy 52. Black Cherry 53. Primetime 54. Royal Hillbilly 55. Nebraska Wedding 56. New Big Dwarf 57. Primetime 58. Moreton 59. Moreton 60. Supersonic 61. Supersonic 62. Jet Star 63. Ramapo 64. Arkansas Traveler 65. Arkansas Travelet 66. Box Car Willie 67. Black Cherry 68. Porterhouse 69. Orange Flesh Purple Smudge 70. Sioux 71. Brandywine 72. Brandywine 73. Sophie's Choice 74. Early Girl 75. Early Girl The following Dwarf plants were planted as a "border" down one side of a raised bed that had a double-row of Packman broccoli plants: 76. Red Robin 77. Red Robin 78. Red Robin 79. Orange Pixie 80. Orange Pixie 81. Orange Pixie 82. Yellow Canary 83. Yellow Canary There were about a dozen other varieties that did not survive the late freezes, flooding rains, and high winds that occurred after they were in the ground. Among them was True Black Brandywine, which was one of my healthiest plants and earliest producers last year. Last week I started seeds for the fall tomatoes. Although I don't yet know how many of each variety will end up being planted in the ground or in a container, here's the varieties I started: LIVINGSTON'S TOMATO VARIETIES: 1. Dwarf Stone 2. Favorite 3. Gold Ball 4. Golden Queen 5. Globe 6. Honor Bright (Lutescent) 7. Ideal 8. Magnus 9. Main Crop Pink 10. Paragon 11. Stone LONG-KEEPING TYPES: 12. Long Season Peach 13. Longkeeper 14. Keepsake 15. Sunray (technically not considered a longkeeper, but seems to be one) PASTE TYPES: 16. Rio Grande 17. San Marzano Redorta 18. Opalka HEAT SETTING TYPES: 19. Solar Set R 20. Solar Fire CHERRIES: 21. Cuban Yellow Grape 22. Sun Cherry 23. Sun Gold 24. Golden Sweet 25. Fargo OTHERS: 26. Dixie Golden Giant 27. True Black Brandywine 28. Bloody Butcher 29. Mountain Glory VFFF/TSWV 30. Mountain Fresh Plus For peppers, I'm only growing a few of the varieties that are the heaviest producers for us. I dropped about 20 varieties this year that I usually grow, but here's what we do have: 1. Tepin 2. Tepin 3. Tepin 4. Tepin 5. Jaloro Yellow Jalapeno 6. Mucho Nacho Jalapeno 7. Mucho Nacho Jalapeno 8. Mucho Nacho Jalapeno 9. Grande' Jalapeno 10. Ixtapa Jalapeno 11. Ixtapa Jalapeno 12. Ixtapa Jalapeno 13. Ixtapa Jalapeno 14. Habanero 15. Habanero 16. Habanero 17. Habanero 18. Red Beauty Sweet Bell 19. Red Beauty Sweet Bell 20. Red Beauty Sweet Bell 21. Red Beauty Sweet Bell 22. Purple Beauty Sweet Bell 23. Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell 24. Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell 25. Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell 26. Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell 27. Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell 28. Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell 29. Roumanian Rainbow Sweet Bell 30. Roumanian Rainbow Sweet Bell 31. Roumanian Rainbow Sweet Bell 32. Roumanian Rainbow Sweet Bell 33. Mini Belle Mix 34. Mini Belle Mix 35. Mini Belle Mix 36. Orange Sun Sweet Bell 37. Orange Sun Sweet Bell The only peppers I've planted for fall are ornamental ones, since the spring peppers will produce in the summer and in the fall. The ornamental ones I planted were Purple Flash and Royal Black, I think. All my plants get exactly the same thing at planting time....Espoma Tomato-Tone and a little bone meal. They do get periodic feedings of liquid seaweed or fish emulsion, and the ones in containers get fed a lot more often than the ones in the ground. In this year's garden, the earliest tomatoes to produce ripe fruit (not counting the extra-earlies in containers) have been Jet Star and Better Bush, Yellow Cherry and Black Cherry. The best-looking plants with healthy foliage and lots of blossoms/fruit, though, are the Harris Hybrids---Supersonic, Primetime and Moreton and the Rutgers/NJAES variety Ramapo. Close runners-up for great growth and fruit set include Indian Stripe, Royal Hillbilly, Mountain Princess and Brandy Boy. Although beaten almost to death by the wind as they were hardening off and/or newly planted, Scarlet Red and Red Defender have rebounded and look great. Most of my plants have set fruit now, so it is just the wait for more ripe ones. Everything went in later than usual this year, so the big harvest has not yet begun. Normally by now I am running the dehydrator daily with a few hundred cherry, grape, currant and small pear-shaped types being dried for winter. I was just thinking yesterday how odd it is that I'm not running the dehydrator yet. Still, I planted tons of bite-sized tomato varieties so I'm sure I'll eventually be dehydrating fruit daily. At the present time, none of the cherry tomatoes have made it into the house yet, because I pick them and eat them while working in the garden. Dawn

It was hot on our deck this evening, too, Amy. It's nice now, tho, with a fan going. In fact, I'd been inside reading all evening and just now came out. Our dishwasher is a Frigidaire and it's also quiet. We only run it once every 3-4 days, so maybe it'll last a while! I wash pots and pans and put in the drainer, sometimes meal prep dishes, same. Truthfully, though, it's the one modern convenience I'd be okay without. In fact, in the last 33 years, I've only had a dishwasher 8 of those years. I'm not a great housekeeper--those gets plenty dirty, we just don't mess it up much; well, except my "art" room, so it is easy to figure out which one of us can be a mess. And it's not Garry. But I've been doing deep-cleaning sorts of things, and that feels good. And the art room looks awesome right now since my organizing binge. (Key words="right now.") My four o'clocks have rebounded, for the third time after being wacked back twice. Same with nicotiana; lantana have gotten pretty big; I hope these hardier ones will overwinter; we'll see. I have new zinnias beginning to bloom; and I wanted to plant some nasturtiums; I did last year about now, and they did awesome, unlike the ones planted in the spring. But I'll have to wait until we get back from Wyoming to put more beets, cilantro, dill and nasturtiums in. The new batch of potatoes we planted around Aug 1 are doing well; I hope we get more this fall. The peppers, all, while not going gangbusters, are steadily producing and looking good. I have a question(s) for you all. I know we talked about roselle, but can't find the thread. Can I grow it in part (hot in the summer) sun? And daturas? And brugmansias? Well, the daturas and the brug are actually part sun where they are, getting about 4 hours of full sun per day; they seem to be doing fine, so . . . . I was thinking about where I'd put them all next year, since it sounds like they're all BIG. :) (I know the daturas and brugs are!) And do the roselle re-seed? I'm thinking yes. It was hot today, but supposed to cool off by Wednesday. We haven't had rain since the first week of August, so I do hope for rain tomorrow. Still worried about south TX, and now Irma. . .

Jennifer, I was supposed to be growing okra, southern peas, melons, cucumbers, winter squash, summer squash and gourds in the back garden but the constant Spring rain ruined that plan after the front garden was mostly filled with other plantings, leaving me little to no space to squeeze them in. Well, really the tomatoes were to be in the back garden too, but the muddy quagmire made that impossible too, so the tomatoes ended up in the front garden, leaving even less space for anything else. When I moved them there, I just figured the back garden would dry out eventually, and it is beginning to, but it is such a weedy mess, since weeds will grow in heavy mud, that I really don't even want to tackle planting back there this late. My fear is that our rain will suddenly stop and I'll have a huge back garden filled with young plants that will need a lot of water. The rain has largely dried up here, though the lower end of the front garden still is very wet. The upper portions of the front garden have dried out enough that the soil is fairly workable but not so dry that I have to water anything, except for newly transplanted seedlings. So, I have half the garden I planned, and the heat has arrived here. We've been in the upper 80s all week and are expected to hit 88-90 degrees today. So far, I have squeezed okra into the front garden, taking out the sugar snap peas (they are burning up in our near-90s high temperatures) just yesterday and replacing them with Jambalaya okra plants that I had growing in red Solo cups. I have a couple of summer squash plants, and cannot figure out how to squeeze in winter squash plants unless something dies unexpectedly and opens up a space for them. After I dig the potatoes, that will open up a 4' x 10' raised bed, so I guess I will put southern peas there. I still don't really have a place to plant any melons or cucumbers. In some years I have grown both of them on the garden fence, using it as a trellis, but with the way herbicide drift keeps hitting the front garden, anything on the fence is first in the line of fire so I sort of hate to plant anything there at all. At least if I have random flowers along the fence line, they seem, for the most part, to be more resilient and to bounce back from getting herbicide drift damage. I could plant melons and cucumbers along the northern fence line, but that's the lower end of our strongly sloping garden (sitting several feet lower than the upper end) and it still is very wet down there. The plants I have there now (Heidi tomato plants and some herbs) are producing but the plants are too waterlogged and look horrible and I am sort of amazed they still are alive. I don't think melons or cukes would fare well down there this year unless we dry out a lot. With potentially heavy rain in the Sunday forecast, drying out might not happen. I have grown cucumbers on the north garden fence before, but not in recent years---the woodland has moved across the 10 feet of open space that used to serve as a buffer between the woodland and the garden and now trees and vines are trying to grow right up to and through that fence line, making that fence line a bit shady. We lost control of that open buffer space in 2010 when we got almost 80" of rain and all the woodland plants went crazy and exploded into growth. We need to spend time this winter clearing it out. We can't do it now because of the risk of dropping a tree on the garden fence. We'll have to wait for the off-season when it wouldn't matter so much if the fence was destroyed. Well, it would matter, because we'd have to rebuild the fence, but there wouldn't be garden plants exposed to deer in winter if the fence was damaged like there would be right now. I do have about a 20' row of bush beans in the same bed as the okra. Those are just now starting to bloom, so they'll likely be producing throughout June, depending on how soon we hit the mid-90s, which tends to shut down bean production. I might be able to replace the bush beans with southern peas if we don't keep getting too much rain. I think late June would be pretty late to plant melons or winter squash though and it only would be possible anyway if we dry out some. When I transplanted the okra after taking out the sad-looking sugar snap pea plants, I found the soil there was still really, really wet. Thus, it seems like melons those probably will come from the Farmer's Market this summer. We can get really good locally-grown melons here, if anyone was able to get them planted this year. A lot of the good melon-growing areas here are on lower-lying ground near the river. I don't think they've been flooded, but they may have been too wet at planting time. It just isn't an ideal situation at all this year. I probably should have planted only half as many tomato plants as I had planned, reserving one of the two large raised beds currently filled with tomato plants for non-tomatoes, but I didn't. I have contemplated taking all the tomato plants out of one raised bed fairly early, as soon as I finish harvesting their first big round of fruit, just to have space for something else. I kinda hate to do that, but then, we're getting a lot more tomatoes than we can eat anyway, so I need to start canning now or the fruit sitting on the counter is going to get overly ripe. I'm not used to having to start canning quite this early. I could take out those two dozen tomato plants in the smaller of the two tomato beds and hardly miss them. I don't know if I will. It is hard to take out plants that are producing. It isn't quite as hard though when you're already overloaded with ripe fruit, so that might help make it easier. Those tomato plants are interplanted with basil, borage, marigolds and other plants that would make planting cucumbers or melons there a real challenge, so I wouldn't gain much by taking them out except I could plant more flowers and herbs there. Really, I am trying to be content with what I do have planted because there's plenty of people in OK and AR with flooded gardens, yards, homes, etc. that really are suffering and losing everything, so having to skip planting a few favorite veggies this year is so very minor by comparison. JetStar and Supersonic can be a little late to set fruit, but usually not extremely late. This has been such a weird year weather-wise that nothing would surprise me. With tomatoes, when we have high moisture and high humidity, tomato plants can go downhill overnight. Diseases like bacterial speck, bacterial spot, Septoria Leaf Spot and Early Blight are much worse in years with weather like this. While I usually don't have trouble with the more serious wilt diseases like southern blight or fusarium wilt, they also seem a lot worse in wet, humid years----not in my garden, but just in a lot of people's gardens in general. I would expect we'd see more of those across the state this year than usual. I even have wondered if this might be one of the very rare years we have late blight in OK. Normally we are too warm and mostly too dry for it, but with all the moisture and all the cool weather in May, we may have had a period of time when it could have developed. Hopefully not, though, since it is a totally devastating disease that can completely destroy a tomato planting in just a few days....and there is no cure, nor can you salvage any fruit---they all are infected and rot. The weird white stuff on your strawberry plants does look like some form of slime mold, though not necessarily the right color and texture to be dog vomit slime mold, which is a real thing. It is peculiar because slime molds usually grow on the ground, and then they quickly die away as soon as the soil dries out a little. They feed on decaying plant matter in the soil. Slime molds are just unicellular beings that thrive on decaying matter and tend to be short-lived when they do appear, often disappearing within a few days. While it is rare here, you can get slime mold on strawberry plants, on the leaves and even on the fruit. Normally we do not have high-enough moisture or humidity levels to support this sort of slime mold on strawberries, but it looks like your plants do have it growing on them right now. Don't worry, the slime mold is a growth but it is not an infection, so your plants aren't ill or anything---they just have an unwelcome guest temporarily growing on them. If it is dry enough, you might be able to scrape it off the plants. If the plants are mulched, the slime mold likely started growing there since, obviously, your strawberry plants are not decaying plant matter. It would help if the next round of rain would miss your garden so more drying out can occur and the slime mold will just go away on its own. I have been finding and killing a lot of armyworms on plants in my garden. Mostly I am finding them while they are very small--maybe a half-inch long at most, so have been able to kill them before they can do too much damage. I have seen other unidentified caterpillars and have left them alone if I don't know what kind they are. I don't want to spray with Bt because I have swallowtails caterpillars all over the place, anywhere that I'm growing parsley, cilantro, dill or fennel for them. I think I have those plants in 4 or 5 different locations and it is a deliberate choice to spread them around so that the songbirds won't be able to find and eat the swallowtail cats as easily. Larry, Your deer are smart---checking to see if some of their favorites have sprouted yet. We are seeing the deer a lot more often too. Sometimes they walk right by the garden fence while I'm in the garden. I have a feeling that if I were not in the garden, they might walk right in through the gate (they've done it before) and help themselves to whatever they are craving. I have no really good explanation why the deer are checking out the yard and garden as much as they are lately, and I've been wondering why I am seeing them so much. I suppose I could blame it a little bit on the river being so high--it is running only about 3 feet below flood stage--but the river bottom lands frequented by the deer aren't even under water, so why more of them are up here on higher ground this last month or two is something I really don't understand. There's plentiful native food for them as we certainly are not in drought. I'm having the same issue with the wild turkeys. The dogs will start barking like mad and I'll know there's wild turkeys in the front yard. They stroll right down the driveway from out west behind the barn, which is the area they always come from and return to, walk down the middle of the driveway a couple hundred feet to the front garden and then either slip off into the woodland adjacent to the garden or turn around and walk back up the driveway like they own the place. I put out cracked corn and a little hen scratch for them west of the barn each morning and they have become quite spoiled. Often, when I walk out the back door, the wild turkeys are waiting for me at their feeding spot. They take off into the back pasture as soon as they see me, but they don't go far. They just stand in the tall grass watching me, and come back to eat as soon as I had back towards the house. We've never had as many wild turkeys before as we've had this year. I see them in flocks of as many as 7 or 8 at one time. Some come from our woodland, and undoubtedly are living in it or the nearby pasture or both, and others come from our neighbors' pasture and woodland area. I hear them all day long, so I know they are around even when I'm not seeing them. Our neighbor who used to hunt them passed away a couple of months ago and I didn't hear his kids or grandkids back there hunting during the spring turkey season---undoubtedly they were occupied with other things. So, maybe we're just seeing more because they feel like they're in a safer spot with that property behind us currently unoccupied. Patti, I just cut them any old time. Like you, I hate cutting them down while the bees are visiting them so much, so I usually wait until they get so big that they are flopping over on the ground, which is happening now. I haven't cut mine yet, but will do so soon. You can cut them back pretty much any time you want, and you can cut them back as hard as you want. I have cut them back almost to the ground some years. They regrow like crazy and are big again in the blink of an eye. Often, I cut back half of them, leaving the other half for the bees. Then, when the ones I cut are about ready to bloom again, I'll cut back the other half. It doesn't matter though. You can cut them all at one time. When I've done that, the bees just switch to other flowering plants until the comfrey comes back into bloom. I worked in the garden longer on Friday than I have in a long time...from around 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I weeded, weeded, weeded seemingly all day long, but also was able to get quite a lot of herbs and flowers tucked into little places here and there in the beds. I finally feel like I made a lot of progress with the weeds---not nearly enough, but enough that it gives me hope that I'll have weed-free beds in another week or two. Not that they will stay weed-free, but they do look a lot better now with all those sprouting weeds pulled out. It takes me so long to weed such a large garden though that if I start at the highest raised bed at the south end of the garden, then by the time I work my way down through the rest of the garden, from south to north, and eventually get back to the first bed, it has new weeds sprouting and the whole weeding cycle starts over again. I need to do some more mulching in the trouble spots. With all this rain, the whole garden seems to be a weedy trouble spot and I don't have enough mulch for the whole thing. With potentially heavy rain in the forecast for Sunday, I'm going to skip grocery shopping and running errands today if I can and spend as much time as possible in the garden again today, or at least until it gets too hot to stay out there. I probably stayed out in the heat too long yesterday and I know I didn't drink enough fluids, but I really tried to stay hydrated. I can grocery shop and run errands on a rainy day. I need to spend the sunny day in the garden. I was amazed at how many small armyworms I found and killed. I've been killing them for weeks, and more just keep coming. Their name suits them. I wasn't even looking for them....just killing them as I came across them. Often they were on small weeds that I was pulling, or on plants near the weeds....a reminder that we try to keep our gardens weed-free for just this reason....to give the pests fewer places to hide. I don't mind looking at weeds in the garden that much, but I don't like knowing the weeds are providing a home for pests that I don't want in the garden in the first place. Speaking of pests, I've been finding and killing a lot of green stink bugs lately, and I'm finding them in about the 4th instar stage. I don't know why I don't find them younger than that. Perhaps they're hatching and growing outside the garden and don't move into it until they're at the 4th instar. I never see their eggs either, or the newly hatched nymphs. Regardless, so far I'm seeing a lot more green stink bugs than brown stink bugs. I've hardly seen any squash bugs at all and when I do see them, they are sitting on non-squash plants looking confused, perhaps because the squash plants are under micromesh netting and they cannot get to them. So far I think I have been successful at killing every squash bug I've found. One advantage to not having many cucurbit crops this Spring is that the squash bugs cannot find anything to eat. Yay! I found a leaf-footed bug inside my garden shed and killed it. I haven't seen many of them yet, and I am glad, as they are quick to fly away when you spot them. I mostly just watch for them on the tomato plants. Right now it is likely they're feeding more on tree fruit. Speaking of tree fruit, the first sand plums are beginning to ripen now and I need to start picking them so I can make some jelly. I'm really sort of surprised we have any at all because we had multiple late freezes after they bloomed that I figured would have killed all the fruit. The freezes killed a lot of the fruit, but apparently not all of it. Have a great day everyone, and Happy June! The heat is arriving right on schedule, unfortunately. Dawn