June 2024 Part 2 Update: Beetles, Chicks, Garlic & Spuds

Welcome to Part 2 of my June 2024 update for the semi homestead life. The garden is growing right along and we’ve harvested both red potatoes as well as garlic. The chicks are also growing like weeds. But we’ve also had a few issues along the way, too like the arrival of Japanese beetles.

With these updates, I hope to do more of a “journal” type of post at least once a month to keep you updated on life here. Hopefully, it will allow you to get to know the person behind these articles (me!) and how we run our semi homestead a bit more.

This will allow me to share the loads of photos I take on my phone instead of having them collect dust in my camera gallery. (You can also look for updates on Instagram if you want to follow along with me there, too.) I’ll also try to link to posts that might be relevant to what happened during that timeframe.

Hopefully, you enjoy getting to know a bit more about our life here in Illinois and how the homestead is going – Both the good and the bad!

Our June 2024 Part 2 Update

The second half of June started out pretty similar to the first half with lots of days in 90º temperatures. This is not normal for Illinois, so I’ve been a bit worried about how the garden and the animals would handle it (let alone myself since I don’t do well in the heat).

Thankfully, we are starting to see good growth in most of the plants. The peppers are growing well and are starting to set blooms and fruit, as are the tomatoes.

The cucumbers are starting to climb up the new arch we put in this season. However, for some reason, I seem to be having an issue with the soil or something in one of my raised beds. It seems to be killing both my dwarf tomatoes as well as my pickling cucumbers. I’m at a loss as to what might be causing it. They don’t look bad in the above photo, but by the end of the month, they looked worse and worse.

I had good germination with my pumpkins with the exception of the sugar pie pumpkins. They are an older seed from 2021, so we only had one plant successfully germinate. I’ll still call that a win since I really don’t freeze much pumpkin anyway.

The green beans are filling in nicely and have just started to set blooms as well. It is nice to see since I had such a rough year last season with the rabbits completely ruining my green bean harvest.

The Flowers Are Still Blooming

The flowers are doing absolutely great, producing amazing blooms that I love to go out and photograph. My favorites this year are by far the portulaca and the lantanas.

I keep hoping to use some of the pansies in baked goods but I have yet to make that happen. Maybe one of these days I’ll bake some sugar cookies and get them on top like I’ve seen on Instagram!

The Chicks Are Growing – June 2024 Part 2 Update

As of the end of June, the new chicks are now around 13 weeks old. They still seem to all be pullets, but I’m sure that will be determined fully in the next few weeks or so.

They are getting along fairly well with the older ladies as long as they give them space. The young girls definitely try to give the old gals space and take their turns at the feeder, but overall they are growing well.

They have figured out that when I am around the chicken yard, there tends to be treats and goodies involved. So they come running up to me at the fence waiting to see what I have.

They’ve been enjoying lots of watermelon rinds as well as pieces of bolted lettuce from the garden. This time of year is so fun because I can give them yummy treats from the garden and kitchen while keeping materials from filling up our trash.

Tying Up Plants

One of the garden tasks I accomplished at the end of June was tying up my tomatoes and zucchini plants. I found this biodegradable fabric on Amazon that stretches as the plants grow. (Product Link: BioStretch Plant Ties)

I am growing two tomato plants per cage (I have big commercial-like cages). To help keep them a bit more tidy and from intertwining as much, I am tying them to opposite sides of the cages.

I am also experimenting with tying up zucchini plants this year. We lost some of our plants to vine borers in the past so I thought I would give this a go and see if it helps. We are huge fans of zucchini (well, my daughter and I are), so I have lots of plants in my garden this year (seven to be exact!).

Since zucchini plants can get rather large and spread out, I am going to grow 5 of the plants up t-posts this year. It’s verticle gardening at its best! The other two I am just growing normally.

Anyway, I got the first tie on those in place in the second half of June. We’ll see if it makes that big of a difference with pests, but at least it will help save space in my garden.

Pests & Issues – June 2024 Part 2 Update

As with any growing season, there are always going to be pests and issues that come up. As mentioned above, one of the issues is having something going on with the soil on one side of my raised bed.

Another issue is starting to see squash vine borer moths flying around. I took care of this guy as soon as I saw him but I’m sure there are more to be found. Ugh.

Another issue is my onions. I have tried growing onions directly in the ground as well as in raised beds and I never seem to have success. Our garden location gets a ton of wind, so I always just end up with onions with bent stems before they should be. At least I can still harvest these and get some use out of them.

Then there was my potatoes. I’m pretty sure that the red variety fell victim to blight. That and some pest went to town on the leaves. It wasn’t potato beetles as I never once saw one, so I am not sure who the culprit was. We do have an increase in rolly polly bugs as well as earwigs, so maybe one of those was having nightly snacks that I was unaware of.

Japanese Beetles

Towards the end of June, the dreaded Japanese Beetles came back. This is not a new situation. We deal with the beetles every single year and some years are worse than others. This year, they aren’t as bad thankfully and I have been able to take care of them by hand picking.

I just go out to the garden with a bucket or bowl of soapy water and drop the little guys into the water. It’s a great way to keep them at bay without using chemicals or sprays, especially if the infestation is smaller than it seems to be this year. Last year, however, was a different story!

They seemed to really like my rhubarb plant. I still hand-picked them when I saw them but I didn’t obsess over it. I have already harvested quite a bit of rhubarb and would rather they eat those leaves instead of some of my more desirable plants and ruin the harvest that could be this summer. The rhubarb is hardy and will bounce back just fine next spring whereas some of my other plants might not.

Harvesting Garlic & Potatoes – June 2024 Part 2 Update

Since the red potatoes started to die back really fast thanks to the bugs and blight, I harvested them on June 27th. We had three grow bags of red potatoes as well as a few plants growing directly in the growing rows.

The harvest from the growing rows was definitely better than those growing in the bags. I also noticed that the majority of the spuds were right at the surface underneath the grass clippings mulch I had placed. So next year, I will likely only grow potatoes in a row and see if we can get a bit better harvest. I still have the yellow potatoes to go thankfully.

We also harvested garlic. This is always one of my favorite plants to grow and harvest. We had pretty good success this year! I did an entire growing row full of garlic. I like to cook with it often as well as save some of the biggest cloves for planting again this fall.

The garlic is now curing in my basement on a rack I made using hardware cloth. The entire basement smells like garlic and I’m not mad about it!

Miscellaneous Homestead Pictures

As with each update, I’ll end by posting a few random pictures from the second part of June. Included are our first zucchini harvested, showing how my “BUSH” green bean plants are doing (I ended up with like 8 to 10 vining beans in the mix), some wild black raspberries we harvested, and a busy little bee helping out in the garden!

Overall, it’s been a nice June but I am looking forward to July when we can really start harvesting and preserving. Bring on the last real month of summer (at least before my kids start back to school in August)!

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!
– Chelsea

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