Category Archives: Randomness

The good news

Whoever the fine, upstanding individual that was was trying to add spam comments (about 2000 a day) on this wonderful, completely unknown blog has stopped. The good news is I should (hopefully) get to spend less time reading comments about generic Canadian drugs. The bad news is that my statistical reporting numbers are now down to their (absolutely pathetic) actual levels.

Too much broccoli

A few days ago I was complaining to a coworker that I may have too much broccoli maturing at the same time. He suggested that I make broccoli-cheese soup. “Holy crap” I thought, “What a great idea.” This suggestion wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but it did remind me that even though I was trying to stagger planting to not have everything ready to harvest all at once, having a bunch of one thing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What I was almost dreading, I now see as an opportunity. I get to try to make something I have never made before. With the invention of Velveeta, broccoli-cheese soup is quite simple.

The recipe I found makes a tasty soup. Its nothing super spectacular, but I would recommend it. I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com, and the only alteration I made was to use the 2% cheese rather than the regular, and to use the fresh broccoli rather than frozen. I should have more broccoli to use shortly, so if you have a different recipe you recommend, feel free to post it.

Scavenger

Looked out the window to see a raccoon trying to work his way into the compost bin. I think he was mostly just curious since all that is in there anymore is grass clippings. I thought that the wire mesh and clasps were a bit much, but apparently they worked.

Is this an entomology or garden blog?

Here is yet another pest, this time in the peas. Along with this guy, the leaf beetles seem to be out in full force. Until I planted this garden, I didn’t seem to notice the damage the beetles do around my yard and even throughout the neighborhood. The trees in my front yard have substantial damage in many of the leaves (that I can see). I have been spraying a neemoil solution on the leaves of the vegetables that I won’t be eating (potato, bean, broccoli, etc) which seems to help until the next time it rains. Once it is washed away, it doesn’t take long for the little buggers to dig in again. I only found one of these caterpillars, so I am not too worried about these yet.

Randomness

I added a new category called Randomness which will include any garden/backyard related post that isn’t necessarily pertinent to a square foot garden. More than likely, just random crap.

Buried treasure

While pulling weeds and raking a few of the squares this evening, I unearthed two things of which I didn’t expect. The first was a grub like you would find in any lawn. The fact that I have grubs in my yard isn’t what threw me since I found them before, it was that I found one in May (I thought they appeared later in the season) and that it was near the surface in soil that didn’t have anything growing in it (no food source).

The second thing was a rib from something the size of a large cat or perhaps a raccoon. I’m no biologist so the animal type is just a guess, but I have taken enough science classes and dissected enough animals (in those classes) to say I am pretty sure it was a rib. It was fairly old so I suspect it cam from one of the compost bags I brought in. Which one? I have no idea.