locally grown serotonin @starrycosmos@sunbeam.city

Jay's patented (not really) Caterpillar Management Technique (also can be used for slugs):
step one: spy a caterpillar where you Don't Want It, ie on food plants or ornamentals you really like
step two : pick up using a nearby dead leaf
step three: carry offender away
step four: Yeet to a part of the yard you don't care about

my rationale is, maybe he can find enough food over there to keep living; if so good for him. maybe he'll grow up to be a pollinator. if he can't, well he probably won't be able to crawl back to my carrots before he starves to death. either way it's a win for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

took a bunch of cuttings of the slowly dying Lena scotch broom, hoping at least one will root

(brooms are highly invasive in a lot of the so called US due to their prolific self seeding, but ours is a hybrid with unviable seeds but gorgeous bee attracting flowers, hence propagation by cuttings)

my Ozark beauty hasn't put out any flowers since early June :/ this is the one that's battling red stele so I've been lenient but cmon. it put out some runners tho, and I let some of them root in order to have a hopefully disease free plant next year (and I'll be using some preventative measures for this one), but I just cut them all off just now to hopefully get the parent plant to put out flowers again

thank goodness these tomatoes are determinate type and stand up 90% of the way on their own or else I doubt my slapdash solution to staking would work

also yeah, those fruit above the trellis? idk what to do with them. I'm just crossing my fingers that they'll behave

found some aphids on my carrots today. both pots had some affected leaves but I only found actual aphids on one leaf. they seem to swarm around one leaf at a time, so I just cut that one off and threw it out. I moved the pot I found them in away from everyone else and I'll keep an eye on it and the other carrots, spoons permitting

the dandelions have finally bloomed again c: I should take this opportunity to finally try out a recipe for dandelions. gonna start out simple and sweet, maybe a fritter or a cookie, and go from there

just finished "bullshit jobs" the other day. funny that I have the most time to read it *at* my bullshit job. next I'm gonna take a crack at "post scarcity anarchism". I hope I'll still be able to understand the more academic language while still only reading in short bursts

like there were sooo many anarchists, it felt safe

hey the queer liberation march today in nyc? goddamn fantastic

some of the lettuces are getting weirdly tall and stretched out :c

I hope it just means they're not getting enough light, not that they're bolting