Corn

The following pictures are of my Golden Bantam Cross corn taken this evening...

Here is what my corn plants look like this evening. The parts sticking straight up on the corn stalks are the flowers. They need to be pollinated for the corn kernels to grow plump (from what I understand). Wind is the main pollinator, which explains why corn plants need to grow so tall.

Here are the flowers up close. the purplish/reddish parts look like they are actually hanging on by a thread and they all do the shimmy in the wind.

I have about 4 corn tassels sprouting out of growth coming from the sides of the corn stalk. So far, at most, I see 2 ears of corn on one stalk being produced.

Corn (part II) and Lettuce

You can see the tassels from the new corn coming out...woohoo....i may get some corn this year!

Here are some lettuce leaves I harvested this year. yum! I read that if you pick lettuce leaves and some milky substance oozes from where the leaf was torn off, the lettuce is bitter-tasting, but although some of my lettuce had this, it still tasted pretty good.

Growing Corn

This is the first year I have attempted to grow corn. The type I am growing is Golden Bantam Cross, I believe. It has been amazing to watch this grow! The flowers have shot out from the top a few days ago, and just yesterday afternoon, I saw the tassels show itself atop 4 growths that will soon be corn! I just hope the pollination goes well so the kernels grow nice and plump!

Yes, I do have to take pictures!

One error I made, tho, was planting a lot of heavy feeders in that plot. Not only do I have about 12 stalks of corn plants in the small area, I also have about 4 charantais melon plants around it as well. I thought they could take the place of squash to cover the ground. The melon plants do this well, but from what I understand, melons are heavy feeders too. I have some bean plants planted around the perimeter, but next time, I should stick with squash around corn plants and make sure that I amend the soil very well where corn will grow.

I'm not saying that my corn plants look unhappy, but just knowing that they are heavy feeders, I could've done more to help this soil. I will definitely be growing some peas/favas and some over cool cover crops over the winter. I better look into that now so I have it on hand when the time comes.

Maintaining and Planning

I only have 2 more seedings that need to eventually be placed somewhere in the garden. It looks either like melon or squash seedlings (I was terrible at labeling!) and the BIG question is where to put them...But that's the fun part.

The rest of my garden is currently in a state of keeping maintained - weed out the small weeds (big weeds have been happily eradicated), water, prune, harvest, fertilize. repeat.

Sluggo has single-handedly kept the slug and snail population around my veggies way, way down. i rarely see them anywhere near my vegetables. if i do, they are promptly removed and disposed of. The only place where slugs and snails are immune to my wrath (unless i have a bad day) is in the compost pile. They actually help with creating the great fertile compost, so I let them be.

My corn plants are currently only about 4 feet tall, but they are starting to deploy their seed stalks. I thought that was odd and premature. Is this normal? Is my soil only going to allow 4 - 5 foot stalks of corn? I expected them to tower over me. well, i'm definitely okay with the manageable height...i just hope the taste of these corn will not be negatively effected by it. First time corn grower here, so its really a corn growing experiment for me.

Another experiment in the garden - Charantais melon. i've never grown melons. And so far, i believe the experiment is proving successful. they are starting to sprawl and show their first flowers! they look a lot like cucumber flowers - small, dainty yellow flowers. i hope i get to try some melons this year!

I've got about 3 - 4 different bean varieties growing throughout the garden, plus 3 different kinds of soybeans. They help build the nitrogen in the soil so i just kinda scattered them all over the place. EXCEPT for the tomato bed. I read in a few places that they don't really like each other. (how can they NOT like beans??) I want to plant more seeds for beans this weekend...i'll have to soak them tonight so they are ready (i find that they sprout faster after a good soak in water).

For the second part of that title ... "Planning"... I have been thinking about what to grow near the end of the summer. I've ordered a lot of greens and lettuce seeds (some asian varieties). I also want to plant some peas and fava beans for soil building. ooh, maybe some broccoli. but for some reason i really have a bad track record of growing broccoli from seed. i think i water them too much. and i don't use a seed starting mix, just because i don't want to spend more than i already do for this garden - otherwise the benefits of growing this garden will be slim in terms of saving money. :-/

The 1st Nectarine

Today I picked the first of 2 nectarines growing on my tiny Nectazee tree I planted earlier this year. (When I say tiny, I mean TINY. It stands only about 2 feet tall. It will grow, at most, 6 - 8 feet). It had some color to it, so I thought it might be ripe. Well, it was partially there. Where there was a red color on the skin, the fruit was deliciously sweet. Where it was still green, the fruit was incredibly sour. So I will keep an eye on the other one and wait till it is completely red (or almost there). How exciting! My first Nectarine!

things accomplished...

Just thought I'd keep tabs on what has been done since the weekend...

- WEEDing: baby weeds are starting to sprout, so I am going to keep on top of that.

- Use home-made compost: I top-dressed most of my fruit trees with what I had.

- Harvest: strawberries. I wanted to harvest the two almonds that I have been watching for the past month, but some dirtbag varmints beat me to it! (#*#(!*@)#($!@#$&%*!!!)) sorry, I digress...

- Sluggo: sluggo the suckas!!! *composure* (hey, this stuff works!!)

- Water: well, I usually water seeds every day or every other day and the rest of the veggie plants every 3 - 4 days. I also decided to deeply water my trees.

- Seeds: Since a lot of my bean seeds are old (2 yrs old), I've been only getting about 50% germination. and on top of that, snails have been mowing down a few that I've missed lining with sluggo. ugh! it is so frustrating to put so much love and effort into the germination of seed, and to see all that hard work swiped down by mean snails and slugs! WAH! So, I've been germinating a lot more bean plants. For beans, I usually wrap the seeds in a very damp paper towel, put seeds and paper towel in a shallow container and put it on a slightly sunny windowsill. Roots usually appear in 1 - 2 days, after which I transplant in pots. Beans I am growing - Tendergreen, slenderette, blue lake bush, dragon langerie, royal burgundy, garbanzo, black jet soy bean, shironomai soy bean, and envy soy bean.

- transplant: my corn seedlings were getting too big for the pots that they were in and i also planted 5 corns in one small pot, so I had to separate them out.

- trim: plum tree and almond tree have been getting way out of hand with new growth. I am trying to keep them around 6 feet tall so I can easily handle them and harvest as well. So far so good.

- watch: most of the garden has been planted. so right now its all about enjoying the growth of the garden and waiting for the day of harvesting. i will eventually have to find homes for my seedlings, but Im not worried about that now.

- turn the compost pile: next time will be about 3 weeks or so.

What I need to do in the upcoming week/weekend:

- harvest: garlic. leaves are starting to turn yellow.

- weed: this is a never-ending job of the gardener.

- placement: tomato cages need to be put in place.

- fertilize: everything! last time i fertilized was back in March.

Pictures - Part One

So here are the pictures I promised a couple of weeks ago. I'll try to post more pics as the days roll forward. (These pics are about a week old).



Seedlings...various plants - broccoli, cukes, corn, beans, etc.