#WeekendCoffeeShare: To the Rescue…

Published on by Yinglan

Good morning or afternoon and welcome.

Coffee? Hot or cold? I’m going to go with hot since it’s gotten a little chilly in the last couple of days after Mother Nature decided we’re punished enough with the heat wave. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the temperature dropped about 40-degrees-Fahrenheit – from the mid-90’s to the upper 50’s.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you it finally rained. It rained for a day and a half. I was so happy despite the puddles of water surrounding my garden. It’s been such a long time since there was any consistent rain and guess what? There was snow.

Not at my house, of course, up in the mountains above 9000 feet elevation.

With the rain though, it accompanied by wind. It was howling, blowing everything in its path. 60, 70 miles per hour, the weather report said. I was so worried my container plants would be knock over. Fortunately, they were protected by the fence.

I didn’t get to assess the damage until Friday afternoon when I did my daily walk around the garden and there it was…

If you look closely, you can see the cage is laying sideways and it’s pulling other plants with it. Somehow in the back of my mind, I knew this would happen, if not this windstorm then the next.

You see, I have kept the tomato plants in the other raised beds pruned, giving them drastic pruning every other week. Meanwhile, I’ve been mostly avoiding pruning this bed because if you can’t tell, there are 2 squash plants growing among the tomatoes – zucchini and yellow squash. If you haven’t dealt with squash plants before, let me tell you, it’s a pain to prune them. There are little hairs that sometimes feel like spikes on the stems that will make you say “ouch” even wearing gloves.

It wasn’t my idea to grow squash, my aunt next door convinced my mom to let her put it there. And now, while my mom is constantly complaining about her knees and back hurt, I must grind my teeth, ignore the pain in my calcified knees, and do the tasks because if I don’t do them, who will? *sigh*

2.5 hours later, it is looking a lot better and upright. I might need to do some further pruning later, but for now, I’ll take this as a task complete.

This is how much I pruned. I pulled out all the yellowing leaves and then proceeded to remove all the leaves obstructing the growth of the tomatoes. Hopefully now, the tomatoes will be bigger.

This is what I harvested from this bed. After pruning, I discovered there were actually a lot more unripe tomatoes than I initially thought. It just couldn’t be ripened because it couldn’t reach the sun due to dense foliage. Hopefully the pruning helped.

As I plunged my hands into the bucket of water after pruning, I could feel the stings from where the tiny spikes from the squash plants touched my hands despite having gloves on. I hate that and for this reason, I’m not growing squash next summer.

I would thank you for joining me in this edition of #weekendcoffeeshare and hope we’ll both return next week.

34 thoughts on “#WeekendCoffeeShare: To the Rescue…”

      1. I grew tomatoes in containers. I just never had enough sun and they were too heavy and difficult to move anyway since I had bird netting intertwined around them to keep the birds and squirrels away from them.

        And I definitely know what you mean by the the stingy twining barbs. I had to deal with those when growing a few cucumbers.

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  3. After reading your post, it sounds like you need some goatskin gloves. These are the only thing I use for pruning. They’re nice because they’re leather, but flexible too. And if you prune squash you won’t get poked with the barbs. I’ve use these for years and I love them. Plus you get 2 pairs in the package. 😉

    Plainsman Cabretta Leather Gloves- Small – 2 Pair https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002BRFOBA/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_TP912ZV5HCMQMJ1FJ70V?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

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    1. I have a pair of work gloves made from leather. I tried them today and though they are better, I still get scratches on my upper arm from where the hairs touch my arm when I had to reach in there to pull the stem out. Thanks for the suggestion.

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  4. Hi YingLan. You are so correct about those small squash hairs. I’ve had some amount of luck with gloves, but I’ve learned to grab a large leaf that I’m pruning and use it with the gloves as a liner to protect my gloved hands. With a bit of practice, I was able to avoid most of the small stings and still get those branches removed. I also have one of those old person reach and grab tools, short handle with a trigger style button that works the grabber at the other end. They allow you to reach into the plan for 2-3 feet and close around the cut branches without actually touching them yourself. As an IT guy who spends most of each day working a keyboard rather than real man tools to harder my skin, my hands are way too soft to help me trim squash plants.
    Thanks for the visit. It sounds like you had quite a weather week.

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    1. Hi Gary, it’s when I try to pull the leaves out and the little hairs from the other stems touch my arms. It might be wise to wear a long-sleeves shirt in this situation but I’d be hot and sweaty.

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  5. I used to plant squash with corn. We, my Granny and I, would dig the hole, place a dead fish (usually a bluegill I caught in the creek for this purpose), then drop in a seed of corn, and one of squash. I never pruned them, though. We always had a good crop, and often shared the extra squash with neighbors in exchange for other veggies we didn’t grow.

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    1. That’s an interesting approach. I tried growing corn before many years ago with no success. I think it might had been a water issue. I’m a fan of fish fertilizer. They work wonders for plants.

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      1. It’s actually a Native American tradition to plant such. Also, we plant the 3 sisters together… Corn, Squash, and Beans… I can attest that they do grow well together, even in a limited space. We had a small space of ground about a foot wide and length of the building (about 15 ft) and we planted there. We also saved the corn stalks for fall decoration before using the leaves to make dolls and composting the stalks and vines at the end of harvest. Wish I still had that kind of room. Where we live now, I had to beg for a small 2ft by 3ft spot outside our front door (where landscapers couldn’t manage to mow) to make a small flower spot… no veggies allowed to be planted. Grr….

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    1. I got rain again today but this time, it made a bigger mess. The 70 mph wind blew my 5-tier vertical planter across my patio into my tomatoes bed. Ugh, it’s going to be a cleanup job tomorrow.

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    1. Thank you and it’s hard work when you’re taking care of plants you weren’t planning to plant in the first place.
      It actually wasn’t my idea to grow the cherry tomatoes. My mom decided to bury a bunch of tomatoes last fall, let them rot and pop back up. It’s not supposed to be so many. I tried to thin it but she wouldn’t let me and somehow, I’m stuck taking care of it. 😡

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      2. Same here. Most plants require starting indoors and they will usually do better as transplants anyway as long as you get them used to the outdoors before putting them in the ground. That way, they won’t die from transplant shock. I like starting them indoors because it allows me to have more control of how many to plant.

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    1. I’m sorry to hear about your tomatoes. They need constant watering, especially during a heat wave. To save a little water and help keep them cool, I had to keep them under shade cloth for most of the summer. I hope you get a harvest. Crossing my fingers.

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