A Garden

according to the poet, Thomas Edward Brown, 'is a lovesome thing' - and for the most part it is. Even while I've been unwell I've managed to spend at least a little time out in the garden every day - and as I've said before, since I had put in the summer vegetable plants before I ended up in hospital I've been able to keep to keep the vegetable garden going with some help. Pisces is no gardener but he is very willing to help with watering and even notices and pulls out the odd weed so everything has been ticking along nicely - until now.

This morning I wandered out to see that quite suddenly powdery mildew had begun to attack my pumpkins. Noooo! There are a lot of pumpkins this year in part because I dumped some
pumpkin scraps in one of the flower beds some months ago and they have sprouted. Woohoo! There's nothing like getting freebie plants, is there. So I shifted them into the vegetable garden and they've been growing beautifully. Now, though, some leaves - courtesy of the humid weather we've been having lately I suspect - have developed spots of mildew. This is not something I've had to deal with before although I've been gardening for as long as I can remember - my parents gifted me with my own space to do with as I pleased when I was nine. Our climate has changed and I'm going to have to adapt, I guess.

Since I don't like to use chemicals I went online to see if there were any alternative methods - and  there were. Who'd have thought that something as simple as milk and water - that's 10 parts water to 1 part milk - would be a way to deal with mildew. Okay, it turns out I should have been spraying every ten days before the mildew showed up but since we've sprayed thoroughly both under and on top of the leaves I'm hopeful we can get on top of it. Fingers crossed.