June 26, 2012 journal

This year I built a small raised bed to grow some dill to use when making our garlic dill pickles.  As I had several opened packages of various varieties of dill, I just sprinkled them at random and lightly raked them into the soil.  The dill is beginning to mature and flower, so I am going to begin clipping the branches and let the flowers go to seed so I can harvest the seed.  The seeds are what really gives the pickles the intense dill flavor, but I also use the branches in the pickles and we love dill in salad dressings.

 The Little Leaf cucumbers in the greenhouse are producing cucumbers at a fast and furious pace in this warm weather and long long days.  I am picking a nice batch every few days and presently have three batches of pickles fermenting.  Ava is delighted.

As a precaution against mildew I have been spraying the cucumbers with my homemade garlic and water fungicide and it seems to be working.  After I crush and boil the water, I strain the garlic liquid into a sprayer to apply it to the plants.


Rather than throwing the boiled garlic away, I thought I would toss it into the annual garden to see if it would repel insects.  For whatever reason I have had absolutely no earwig damage to my dahlias since I began doing this.  I had been spraying them with an insecticide, but I discontinued doing so to see if the garlic was having any effect, and it may very be repelling the earwigs.   Time will tell....