Squash Blossom Rag

The garden is doing quite well. As you can see from the picture, the squash are in bloom. One of the tomato plants also has blooms. The other is not doing so well. The leaves have begun curling up and turning a kind of brownish color. I sprayed some organic fungicide/insecticide/miticide on it to see if that will help. I don't see any bugs and it doesn't look like anything is eating the leaves, but I'm not sure where else to start. I think maybe a cat is spraying it, or the dog is peeing on it for some reason. All of the other plants are coming along, but very slowly. I have sprouted some more datil pepper plants in the hope that if I cover them with floating row covers when I put them in the ground, they will not get eaten this time. I am continuing to use the Terracycle garden food, but I can't see that it is having any effect at all on the plants. Melissa says her garden is coming along well also. We got about 5 inches of rain between Friday and Today here in Jacksonville thanks to tropical storm Barry. If we could just get another 5 or 6 tropical storms here with a lot of rain and a little wind, that would really help North Florida's drought conditions and my garden.
Melissa and I are finally going to make it to the Alachua County Farmer's Market this weekend. I'm pretty excited. It's a grower's market, which means that only the people who grow the food are allowed to sell it. Obviously this is much different from the Jacksonville Farmer's Market(a huge disappointment!) where anyone who has a crate of produce can sell.
Lastly, I would like to return to a topic that I mentioned in my last post. Since then I have seen a few more articles about how terrible it is that organic food is being produced by large "factory" farms. I find these articles to be very disturbing and elitist, and smacking of neo-ludditism. Everywhere you see information that says that organic food is more nutritious than non-organic food, and it is certainly better for the environment. Every "environmental" writer should agree that it would be great if organic food were to be available to everyone, but when the distribution system to make that possible begins to appear, it is immediately demonized. So what is really meant by these articles is that everyone should have organic food, but it should only be produced on farms that make everyone feel warm and fuzzy and don't use any technology that would allow for economies of scale. So, since organic production will be limited, organic foods will continue to be out of reach of many people. Certainly, so-called "factory farms" have earned a well-deserved poor reputation. But, if a farm is following organic and humane standards, I think bigger is definitely better.
Anyway, that's it for today. Tune in for more exciting vegetable talk next time!