Pollination, wind and nicotine spray

Tried something new today. Made some nicotine spray from used cigarette butts. Sprayed it all over the garden, except for the tomato plants. I did spray around the edges of the tomato mounds. Nicotine is supposed to kill aphids on contact. The toxicity only lasts for a few hours. Onion, garlic, tomato leaf and even marigold solutions act as aphid repellents but don't kill them. The nicotine dissipates after a few hours, while the others may last until the next rain. So in any case, treatment will have to be repeated. Thought today was try to kill off as many as possible, then use repellent sprays to keep them out.

Pollinated the corn plants by hand today. (Doubtful you can come up with any plant sex jokes I haven't already thought of!) Have to pull the tassels from the top and rub them on the silk strands. Really interesting because in a few moments, the red silk begins turning brown as each strand is pollinated. Each strand leads to an individual kernel on the cob, so you have to pollinate as many strands as possible. If you miss too many, the corn will have gaps of undeveloped kernels. Few hours after that, the pollinated red strands turn completely brown, so it's easy to see which ones are not pollinated.

Wind kicked up hard again this evening. Too hard to work on much outside. Have to get more shelters built this week. Decided to keep with the basic A-frame design. Inexpensive, easy and fast to build, rather stable. Been thinking ahead to colder weather an think the A-frames should be easy to adapt to cold covers. I can cover west and south sides with glass (preferable) or plastic and the east and north sides with plywood painted white on the inside to concentrate heat. I'll have to put hinges on the end pieces for access.

I think this design and larger adaptations hold a lot of promise for arid environments. Even if pallets aren't available, a similar design of construction is affordable and realistic.