I Just Want ONE BLT

I got a bunch of tomato and transplants that I need to start moving to big pots, and I'm suffering a brand new wave of whiteflies and mealybugs. Wouldn't you know it? I can either find a way to get the bugs out of my older plants, or I have to kill them to keep them from infecting the new ones.

Fortunately, I think I have it. I think I made a giant mathematical mistake when I dosed my plants with imidacloprid a month or two back. I believe I was supposed to hit them with roughly 0.2 grams of active ingredient, and I ended up somewhere closer to 0.002. Oddly, the bugs went away. Maybe that's all it takes. But today I whacked them with the bigger dose anyway. I'll keep re-checking my math. For some reason, I find simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication more challenging than calculus. Variables just don't seem as slippery as numbers, when you're absent-minded.

Oh, hey. I have Mathcad 5,000 BC installed on this machine. I should have converted everything to variables and used that. Or--horrors--used a pencil and a calculator.

Oops, I forgot to install it when I upgraded my hardware. Rats.

They're saying now that imidacloprid is killing all the bees. So naturally I'm doing the responsible thing and using as much of it as I can before they take it away from me. Hey, I can't eat bees.

If it turns out I'm overdosing the plants by a factor of a thousand, at least they'll make nice ornamentals.

My second bean crop is starting to produce. I guess I'm going to get a lot of beans. They don't seem to be getting rust this time. That's good because my last batch generated about two meals' worth of shucky beans, which isn't much.

I have to get serious about cutting back on pepper varieties. I managed to sprout a whole bunch of "habanero gold" peppers (no idea what the real name is), and if they breed true, they're going to be magnificent. So I should get rid of my mediocre varieties and replace them with these. I guess that means the white habaneros, fun though they were, are history. And the Caribbean red habaneros. Also the orange habaneros, and maybe the yellow habaneros, which I haven't tried yet. I need to try the Jamaican reds now that I have a few, but I have a feeling they'll be getting the axe.

I have to narrow the tomato choices down to three or four varieties. I'm thinking Mortgage Lifter, Kentucky Beefsteak, Cherokee Chocolate, and Dr. Wyche's. Two yellow, two red. If I could get six reliable plants going, I'd be in heaven.

Still have to bag my papayas. Once they turn yellow, flies will lay eggs in them. Where on earth do you get paper bags the size of a papaya? It's driving me nuts. Will plastic work, or will they rot? I don't know.

My basil died. I can't believe that. Something found it, I guess. It was driving me nuts anyway, taking over the yard. Maybe I'll plant some new basil and take the "herb garden" raised bed more seriously. Right now, I have sage, thyme, and Greek oregano I could move out there. Add basil, and I have most of my herb bases covered.

The imidacloprid business is going to get very interesting. Tomato growers claim they'll lose half of their crop if they can't use imidacloprid. Bee lovers claim it will make bees nearly extinct. Who wins? I've read that a bee-friendly poison called spinosad may be a good substitute. Try finding it in a store, though.

Guess I'll bag those damn papayas.