I buy it in dried herb form and put a handful in a bucket of water with a air stone bubbling it for a few days. I have read that just about the only way to kill a comfrey crown is to build a hot compost pile on top of it. If I had it growing I would just rip off the leaves and drop them right on the ground. Let the worms add them into the Earth. I do this with dandelions, if I don't eat them first!
It has been so dry here the dirt is like beach sand. Where I tilled. Under that is hard as a rock. The onions dried up in the ground all except for a few. Pulled them to cure and I planted some last minute peas. If the first frost comes early they are too late. Worth a shot. To the right is 5 summer squash and 4 yellow zucchini. on the left is summer squash, on the right is black beauty zucchini. 31 plants - about 75 feet of row. I'm picking 3- 5 pounds a day and donating 25 pounds a week to one of the local food pantries. I had extra space this year. They aren't much work, about 5 minutes to hunt and pick in the AM and again before sunset. Normally the average rainfall suffices and I've been lucky so far this year no vine borers or pickleworms unlike last year .
I have run out of tomato cage. For reference I'm 5'6" and the top of the gutter is 8ft. All open pollinated heirloom cherry tomatoes that come up on their own every year. It's fun to see what tomatoes show up. Left to right in picture with current counts- pink (133) and red pear shape (22), fig tree, purple round(306), dark pink round(80), dark pink oval (9 ). The 2 lower counts are ripening later. One of my round purples had over 1000 a couple years ago. Sorry any of the ripe ones are hidden in the middle.
We've been harvesting great tomatoes and cukes this year, our peppers are excellent too. Unfortunately these "Squash bugs" got our summer squash which were doing well early in the season so we lost all of our yellow summer squash and most of our zucchini, although we saved a few. The squash bugs also got our winter squash although we got some. Killing the squash bugs was very difficult, we found the most effective method was to mix a pot of coffee with some Dawn dishwashing detergent and spray the critters directly with that, it kills them in 30 seconds, doesn't hurt the plants. But, they lay their eggs underneath the leaves and you can scrape them off but good luck finding them all. Just keep spraying then every day. But with the drought here in the Northeast it's been hard to water everyday but needed. Kept the disease down though.
Instead of having squash early this year I started them late and held some back and avoided squash bugs and vine borers completely. But I got pickleworms again this year. I had a couple weeks of picking 30-35 pounds of zucchini and summer squash but that has now fallen off a lot. I was giving 25 pounds a week to the food pantry in town which appreciates anything they can get that is fresh, local and organic is a plus. Next year I'll start spraying with BTk before I see any pickleworms. Maybe it is global warming but I never remember or heard of getting pickle worms up this way until last year.
From what I've read they don't Winter over here. It is too cold. They follow the warm weather up from further South. They can have 4 or 5 generations per year. I haven't seen the eggs on leaves yet and I've been checking all the decaying leaves and removing them as they fade. Tomatoes and zucchini used to be the easy stuff to grow !! LOL.
I've been gardening out here in north central Mass for 30 years and this is the first year I ever got those squash bugs. They're difficult to get ride of. I wasn't spraying pesticide as a preventative. Things like Malathion and Sevin, so maybe that's why I got them this year. I hate using that stuff, as it always seems like it can kill the plants if you do it wrong. Don't ask me how I know.
Here's my beans this afternoon after a killer frost. It's ok though, I picked my beans two days ago. Others weren't lucky, I heard one very good gardener who left her green house door open and it killed all her tomatoes. Others who tented lost it all as well. The last one is a poor picture but it's a black bear cub in a tree behind my house half hour ago. There were two cubs in different trees and momma in the grass behind them. This the season to watch over our kids! Cougars and bears are getting antsy!
Was looking for a spot to post my squash harvest (Blue Hubbard, Butternut, Acorn) pictures; hoping to find happy homes for most of these ... if not, chickens will be happy to eat what we can't. I can usually store the Butternut through March/April. Now I need to go read the whole thread (yes, I'm just a bit backwards )
That certainly is a large crop of squash. My favorites are the butternut and buttercup. What ever you don't consume can go to a soup kitchen if you want.
I used to give extras to a neighbor who delivered to a food bank; he has stopped doing that now, so I may need to find a place locally that will take produce.
