TGIF! Are you ready for a great weekend? I share this amazing recipe with you every summer and I hope you love it as much as I do. Dixon melons are in season and available at the farmers' market and via Root Cellar Foods. My order is being delivered to my house today and I will enjoy this soup at my campsite tonight. How will you enjoy this amazing soup? Share with us in the comments.
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What’s vexing your veggies?You carefully prepare your vegetable garden, working in compost, starting seeds indoors, and transplanting after the last frost. Then, it never fails. Your plants drop their flowers, get strange dark spots or mysterious white splotches, or are attacked by miniscule insects. Don’t worry. You can manage these common summer vegetable problems by using “integrated pest management (IPM).” IPM is a sustainable, science-based approach to pest management that identifies and reduces the risks from pests using a variety of methods tailored to the problem. The selective use of pesticides makes IPM different from organic gardening. However, one IPM tenet is to always use the least toxic methods first. The least toxic methods are actually preventative measures. Rotating crops, buying disease-free plants, providing proper irrigation, and taking good care or your plants are the least expensive and least toxic ways to enjoy a healthy garden. Your local Cooperative Extension has a lot of good, research-based information to help you choose and grow healthy veggies. Once your garden is planted and growing, IPM requires that you determine your tolerance threshold for pests and problems in your garden. In other words, can you live with the loss of two tomato plants, but draw the line at losing three? Can you live with a few squash bugs but think a dozen is unacceptable? These are the types of questions we often ask folks who come to our office for answers to their gardening problems. Monitoring and identification is the key to successful IPM. I enjoy taking my morning cup of coffee out to my garden, and walking around to see what’s happening. I am always surprised at how much I learn from quietly observing my plants. I’m delighted to see a new bud here or a beneficial insect there. Once you become familiar with your garden, you will quickly notice when things are off kilter. Many clients come to us lamenting that their plants died suddenly or overnight. However, this is rarely the case. Most plants exhibit several signs or symptoms well before their demise, but we fail to notice them. Regularly observing your plants will enable you to spot potential problems as they arise. Catching problems at the onset allows us to use the least toxic (and often least expensive) method of control. If you see an insect, or condition you don’t recognize, such as a curled or mottled leaf, you can collect it and bring it to your local Extension office. They will identify it and recommend control methods. Often people spray a variety of chemicals to control a problem, only to discover that the problem is easily managed by simply spraying water. Properly identifying your problems will save you time and money, and help protect the health of your family and our environment. Only after you have identified a problem is it time to consider which IPM control methods to use. IPM control methods can be physical, cultural, biological or chemical. The most effective IPM programs use a combination of these techniques to control problems. Physical control Physical controls include hand picking, fencing out, pruning, or any other technique that physically prevents a pest from taking up residence on your plants. Cultural control Cultural control is essentially growing and cultivating the plant according to its specific needs, modifying the habitat as necessary. Often, these needs are detailed on seed packets or plant tags, in catalogs, or in reference books. Your local Cooperative Extension also has information on proper cultural care for growing many vegetables. Biological control Biological control is using a living organism to control your problem by eating it or damaging it. Beneficial insects, such as lady bird beetles, praying mantises, or green lacewings, are introduced to prey on the nonbeneficial insects. The eggs or larval forms of the predacious insects are commonly sold in nurseries and garden centers. Chemical control The final method of control is using chemicals. The precise and careful use of pesticides sometimes may be the only way to control a problem, especially if the problem has already gotten out of hand. So, how can you use IPM to solve some common summer veggie vexations? Here are a few common problems and ways you can solve them using IPM. These problems are often brought on by high temperatures, low humidity, or wide temperature fluctuations – conditions we often experience in northern Nevada during August. Blossom drop Every summer people are mystified because their tomatoes have dropped all of their blossoms. This problem occurs when the temperature drops below 55 F at night, or rises above 90 F during the day. However, uneven watering, low humidity, unusually heavy fruit set, or nitrogen irregularities can also cause blossoms to drop. While you can’t do much to change the weather, there are some steps you can take to help your plants hang on to those blossoms. To increase nighttime temperatures, you can cover your tomatoes with a lightweight floating row cover at night, or use “walls of water” to insulate around each plant. These are easy to use and available at local nurseries. Most importantly, make sure you water regularly, thin fruit, and apply an organic mulch to regulate soil temperature and fertility. Spider mites Spider mites thrive in the hottest days of summer. They will turn your veggie plants into a dry crispy mess if you don’t control them. Since spider mites like it hot and dry, control them by altering their environment to make it cool and humid. Increase the humidity and lower surrounding temperatures by hosing or misting plants during the heat of the day. Powdery mildew If your vegetables are covered with a strange white or grey residue, you may have powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is a fungus that prefers hot, dry conditions. This is confusing to many people since we tend to associate “mildew” with warm, humid conditions. To control powdery mildew, remove the affected plant parts, increase air circulation by thinning and selective pruning, and increase the humidity by misting your plants. Regular watering and keeping the soil moist will also help reduce the infection. As you develop your IPM program, you will discover that many of your veggie vexations are easily solved with good horticultural practices, a little common sense, and getting to know the cycles and rhythms of your garden. This is a reprint of an article I wrote when I was the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For more specific gardening and horticulture advice be sure to visit your local Cooperative Extension office. We have almost a dozen folks in our True Spirit Whoop Group! All of our Coaches are now Whoop groupies! Are you ready to join us? Use my link to get your first month free. If you're already a Whoop user, join our True Spirit Whoop Group with the team code: COMM-AD6416. I have been blogging about my Whoop experience since I started wearing my Whoop in July 1st. Today I will start sharing the experiences of our Whoop Group, starting with my husband, Coach James. Coach James, Why do you Whoop?Why did you decide to wear Whoop?
You told me I had to. Just kidding. Using your affiliate link reduced the initial cost to $8.95, the cost of shipping, with such a low initial investment it is very approachable. I saw that you were learning so much about your recovery that I became curous about mine. I also want to compare the Whoop sleep performance data to our Sleep Number bed. How long have you been wearing Whoop? I have been wearing my Whoop since August 19. What is your goal for wearing Whoop? I am interested in managing my work stress. I would like to gain insight into how work stress impacts my heart health and if I can actively manage that. I have only been wearing my Whoop for about one week, and so far I have opened the Whoop app on my phone during difficult conversations and watched my heart rate rise. I have practiced relaxation techniques such as deep breathing and watched my heart rate lower in real time. I am inspired to stay on top of my stress throughout my work day. I'm also interested in seeing if drinking affects my recovery and if I'm working out "smarter," not harder. What have you learned so far? I've learned how to actively manage stress in the moment. I've also learned that wearing something on my wrist while working out is not as bad as I thought it would be. I am pleased to learn that you don't have to have your phone on or the app open while you workout. Everything syncs afterwards. It's cool that you also don't have to have bluetooth or cell service for it to work. Once you regain a connection everything downloads from the strap to your app. Have there been any challenges with wearing Whoop? I did kettlebell snatches during the outdoor workout on Saturday and I had to rotate the strap. I wasn't sure if it would read my biometric data with the sensor on the inside of my wrist, and it did without any problem. My set-up was super easy, but I use an iPhone. I hear Android user have had some issues. I also have the same issue you have had with the Whoop strain not representing actual CrossFit intensity. If my workout is less than 15 mins, my Whoop strain score does not correlate with my perceived rate of exertion. Do you have any advice for new Whoop users? Use your Whoop data for good and try not to become obsessed with the numbers. It's a tool to help you gain insights into your lifestyle choices. Ultimately you need to live your life and pursue your own happiness, even if it's independent of what your Whoop analytics tell you. Also, don't worry about trying to sync Whoop with your WOD. Just start your Strain Coach, if your using it, at the beginning of class and press "End and Save" at the end of class. All the warm-up, mobility and WOD prep stuff we do is legitimate workout stuff, let it all count for your daily workout strain. JOIN OUR WHOOP GROUP! If you are interested in joining us on our Whoop journey, use my link to get your first month free. If you're already a Whoop user, join our True Spirit Whoop Group with the team code: COMM-AD6416. Maria joined TSCF just days before we got shut down due to COVID. She tried her best to stay active with our at-home remote coaching. She was so very happy when we reopened so she could join the group and feel the magic. She's doing so great and we can't wait to see what she does next! Maria, Why do you do CrossFit?1. What was your fitness life like before you started training with True Spirit CrossFit?
It was nonexistent. I didn't have any fitness. 2. What brought you to True Spirit CrossFit in the first place? Wanting to better my health and the people I surround myself wanted to help me with that. 3. What was your first impression? Has that changed? My first impression was feeling so welcomed and to this day it hasn’t changed. 4. What was the first thing fun or positive thing you experienced while training with us? Modified dodge ball. Also being accountable for Reaching my goals. Even after a few workouts my body likes me better. 5. Are you working on any special CrossFit related skill now? Getting in a routine of 3 days a week to CrossFit. 6. How has you life changed since training with TSCF? Yes! I have a lot more energy and feel less foggy. I can move around more without hurting. 7. What's your favorite True Spirit CrossFit memory? When Leslie came to my work and called me out in front of my friends asking me why I haven’t been at the gym. |
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