SUMMER PROJECTS

With the July summer heat and humidity my theory is that it is time to plant less and make some improvements. My list of things that I really ought to do one day has become a small book so it is time to whittle the project list down some.

I figure that in South Florida at least June , July, and August are really not planting months. The season starts here in September for the most part unless you are a big fan of Okra.

So the plan is to reduce some of my backyard grass and make space for some new planting beds before September rolls around. The St Augustine grass that makes up most of the lawns around these parts during summer is really labor intensive. It has to be mowed and edged almost weekly now that the rains have started. So the less grass the less work way I see it.

Now that I have plenty of compost working it seems like a good idea to build some more small planting beds for vegetables. At the same time I am going to fence in my main backyard gardening area to keep my dogs out. Lets see; less grass = less work and better utilized space with a rustic garden fence that keeps out my dogs. Cool!

Here is the plan that I came up with. The fence will run all the way down the yellow line in the picture and all the grass to the right of the line will be gone.

I already made the first section of fence and two gates last week. So this week the project continues.

Here it the finished rustic garden fence as it looks now.

I can tell it is a great success because the dogs hate it. They now cannot frolic in my plants. They have been giving me the evil eye ever since I put the garden fence up. Priceless!

Now what remains is to take out all the grass to the right of the fence and replace it with some planting beds surrounded with mulch.

This will eliminate about one third of the grass in my backyard and give me a lot more room to plant vegetables this fall.

Here is the first section of the new rustic garden fence that I put up a couple of weeks ago. With the heat the only way that I could make it was to do small sections over a period of days.

Now that the whole fence is in and the dogs are no longer in the garden it is already more better [ as we say in the South ]. The birds can relax some without having to look over their shoulders for charging dogs. And the lizards can hunt unobstructed now snapping up the bugs within the fenced enclosure.

As for the ongoing folk plant bug repellent here is the latest update.

After getting several opinions the recipe has been refined some although the final produce may require further tweaking.

Here are the ingredients for the first batch. The bar of Ivory soap was carved into slices and put into a jug of water to dissolve into a slurry last week. It has dissolved into a nasty goop now and is looking good.

Next is the ingredients for the kicker to the brew.

This includes some hot Jalapeno peppers added to a clove of Garlic and a Half of an Onion.

All the kicker ingredients were added to a food blender with water included and blended together.

The end result made up a couple of bottles of Bug juice kicker.

This is a really hot nasty brew with an powerful odor. Perfect. Now to let this brew set and ruminate for a few days.

The squeezings from the bug juice will be filtered through a cloth to remove the particulate matter leaving pure liquid bug juice.

A shot of the distilled down bug juice will go into the sprayer along with a hearty glop of the Ivory soap liquid.

This will be mixed with water in the sprayer bottle , shaken well and sprayed onto all the plants that have been under bug attack.

Not sure if this brew will stop the bugs from eating the plant leaves but it just might convince them to dine elsewhere.

--SANDDUNE--