The Master Gardener Checks In

and now....an essay on 'corn' and the thinning thereof: time to stop for a moment and listen to Will;

My back surveys the situation. Eight 80-foot rows of calf high corn; four have been thinned already – four remain. The sun is already high and the sweat has been rolling into my eyes for the last hour or so. Best get this done and over with so I can fertilize and hill. The optimal spacing for sweet corn is about 10 inches. This late in the season, I thin from 10 to 12 inches in case water is in short supply, which means that for every 5 plants, four will die. I would love to be able to plant one seed every foot, but one cannot predict the vicissitudes of germination, so we plant every two inches or so and thin the plants. It becomes a game. One tries to thin out the weaker plants and leave the strong at the proper spacing, but best not to over think the situation or it will never get done. You often just have to take out that outstanding plant in the interest of proper spacing, apologizing under your breath for the tragedy. No spreading of your leaves in the nurturing sun or dusting pollen to your awaiting ears… But the corn can’t hear you; it doesn’t yet have ears.
I endlessly repeat the grade school P.E exercise “touch your toe, touch your toe”. You would think your back would develop the strength of Atlas and I guess it might if you did this every day, but the activity is seasonal and infrequent. Like building a house, once your back and legs are accustomed to stooping down on the floor, you employ a different set of muscles to install the ceiling. Fortunately, it is only four more rows. I can remember the 400-foot rows I worked at the Isabel farm. One of those would be longer than these remaining four combined. And I usually planted 10 rows at a time. On those green ribbons, it was always best not to look up; just keep going until you could sense that you were near the end. I was much younger then, but had the same problem straightening up afterwards as I do now. My mind wanders back to that time with the rhythm of pull, pull, pull, and the occasional snap of a plant breaking off instead of pulling out. As the broken plants separate, they make a squeaky sound like that when you rub your teeth quickly with your finger. There is also a unique smell that is sweet and rich. In the course of thinning, I also pull the taller weeds that the disk hillers will not completely cover, and try not to be obsessive about the weeds or the spacing. The corn doesn’t care, but what if the agriculture agent visits, “I can see you got off a little there (tape measure in hand). Yep, just what I thought, this one here is only eight inches and that one is twelve and a half. And you call yourself a farmer?” My face reddens in imaginary shame. But even the Ag. agent will not notice when it all becomes a sea of green and yellow.

Such is Life...

We came to the conclusion long ago that there were three indispensible vegetables (as far as customers are concerned). In no particular order, they are: tomatoes, corn, and watermelons.
In any given year, your corn could get blown over or the deer could get in and kick around your melons or the aphids and squash bugs could overcome your tomatoes....you get the idea. The jury is out on the melons so far, because they're just starting to run (crawl along the ground) and set melons - they look good so far, but you never know. The tomato season has been really fine, but they pretty much all set at once, so we are over-run with tomatoes (that's not a bad thing, though). The corn, on the other hand, has been interesting. Will works so hard to plant, thin, hill, etc. etc. and the corn, as you have seen here, has been quite beautiful.You know, the critters can tell you exactly when the corn is ready. Because they start to get into it. And the battle begins. This year you would be amused at our efforts because they were, well-amusing. But necessary. We were trying to protect this crop for about five or six days, until the weekend (because Saturday is our big selling day around here). So...the raccons made themsleves known first. They come in from the far side; pull down a stalk - take a bite from an ear - pull down another stalk. Pretty big damage in a short time if you're not watching. So - Will wrapped the whole patch in electric fencing. It's a long story, but it got done and he stopped that monkey business:
Then the blackbirds come in from above. I'm sure you remember the Big Plastic Owl who sat watch on the dock in the winter and early spring. Well, his original purpose was to lord over the corn wen the time came. So up he went.And you remember the Osprey - the Kite Bird - also for pond protection - but, for good measure, Will put him out there too, although I wasn't able to get a decent picture - you can just visualize.
An army of measures and only for a few days...Alas - a wierd thing happened to the corn. DOn't get me wrong. We got corn...and some of it was beautiful. But as we inched towards the weekend, the ears started to shrivel up on the ends and the shriveled business began to creep down the ears..it is quite strange and we are not at all sure what it is all about. We've had many, many seasons of corn and have never seen this before. Maybe not enough water at the right time...but that doesn't quite fit the picture. There was enough water. who knows? We probably lost 50% of what was out there to this strange phenomenon. Maybe Will has some new ideas about it, I don't know. Our customers through the week and through Saturday got all they wanted, I think. But there would have been much much more. Oh well, that's the way it goes. This year, we have yet another patch of corn right behind this one, so for the first time I can remember, we'll have two crops this summer. We'll see what happens with crop #2. I guess what we always want is so much of something so good that you just don't care anymore and you can wait until next year to taste it again. That didn't happen with the corn. But it is close to happening with tomatoes, I can tell you.

First Day and an Embarrassment of Tomatoes

I told everyone we'd open at 8:30...this is about ten minutes later! We had a rush on produce. There were people everywhere...in the blackberries - at the table, in the garden. Fabulous. And this went on pretty much all day. A great start to our season...lots of happy folks (and cute kids).
We thought we'd maybe not open today, because we were sold out of everything except tomatoes...Will comes in this morning and says....There's at least two wheelbarrows of tomatoes out there...put out the sign! hmmm....I did send an update to our customers but it's been slow this Father's Day. They'll keep - but in the meantime, look what up in the carport...
and the driveway...not to mention there's a big pot of cut up tomatoes on the stove - the ones that had dings and little bites on them...sauce...yum.

Open This Weekend

Long time coming; but we're there.
Put out a few signs in the front: Squash, Tomatoes, Flowers, Herbs.
I would like to comment - it seems people can't find tomatoes at ANY price!
But here we are, with a nice crop. Lots of folks have been waiting for the signs it seems...so they came up the driveway kind of all day. It feels familiar and you do meet the nicest people - kind of like going to the garden center. You know, bad tempered people just don't hang out at the Garden Center...tomorrow will be very busy - picking etc. We haven't had air-conditioning since last Sunday - long story and I don't want to whine about it...but one must temper one's activities accordingly - so wish me well - it's possible this may be resolved by Friday afternoon. In the meantime. I'll be up at 5:30 a.m. and out in the garden by 6 if I'm disciplined.

Nearing Normal

Seems like it's been a long time coming...but the garden finally, finally looks like a garden. Thanks to no rain for a bit, and hard work by all (but, I must admit, mostly Will, because he does all the heavy lifting, so to speak).We were feeling like maybe we should just hang it up for the summer garden - wait till fall planting - that would be soon enough anyway. And then the rains stopped, and then Buffy showed up to help every few days and with a lot of time and sweat, the garden took shape. And now, we're on the verge of opening things up to our customers. A couple called yesterday; they had gone to a blueberry farm but it was closed (on a Sunday??) and they asked if we had berries...no. Blackberries? well, yes...some..uh...sure, come on over. I showed them where the blackberry row is, gave them hats and rags (for the sweat, you know) and bowls. I rummaged around and got the scale, the money box, the bags, the basket for weighing, the berry baskets. I checked the fridge to assess what I had picked that morning; yellow squash, basil...when it was all said and done, it was a good feeling, because it was so familiar. My.Summer.Has.Arrived.

Wrested from the tall, tall weeds...

A pretty good garlic haul this year. These are maybe the finest bulbs we've harvested in a long. long time. Late last evening and early this morning (as a side-note, I want to say that it's so much easier in the morning when everything is wet with dew), wading through amazingly tall grass that had sprung up seemingly overnight...it's a good thing that garlic sends up very tall shoots with a big purple ball of a flower on top; otherwise, finding them would have been much harder. So that was kind of messy and nasty (and hot). And a bit creepy. But now Will can mow down the whole mess and pull up more new rows to plant.
So that's the end of 'things planted in November to harvest in the spring'. Not that it's spring anymore.
The garden moves along at breakneck speed this time of year. I noticed that the lettuce has decided to spring into action, but that probably was the fertilizer I put on it last week. Looks like we'll be having much of our produce come in all at once, which will be nice for a change.
Back to work...

Ok FTD.....Beat This!

...a gathering of flowers from here and there around our little farmActually, Will picked these for me for our 34th anniversary this past weekend...and - as I always remind him; he may very well have missed his calling (floral arranging wasn't exactly on his list, but he does have talent in that area as you can see!). Gladiolas, lilies, wild sunflowers and yarrow blossoms...I would rather have this than 50 dozen roses! When we were very young, he would always find flowers to pick for me and once even climbed a big magnolia tree to get just the perfect flower.