Knee High

I’m sure you’re wondering… was our corn knee high by the 4th of July?

Yes.  Yes it was.

In fact, it was WAY beyond knee-high.  To put it in perspective, I’m 5 feet 7 inches tall.  The corn is almost as tall as me in some spots.

Just today, our early corn started to tassel.

The pumpkins have been aggressively vining, though I haven’t seen any flowers yet.  Should be any day now, I would imagine.

The garden is looking amazing right now.

We’re at the point where we’re eating salad at dinner every night to eat as much lettuce as we can it before it bolts.  I’ve been inserting kale into anything and everything I can get away with (Kale on pizza?  Yes!).  I’ve been trying to keep up on weeding in the garden, but with the two little ones it’s been tough.  Right now just the corner by the cabbage and Brussels sprouts is in dire need.

You can’t really tell from this vantage point, but I sprayed fungicide on my tomato plants late last week.  We always have blight problems with our tomatoes and this year I’m trying my best to keep up on the fungicide before the blight sets in.  Since we had a wet start to the growing season the bottom leaves have already showed some signs of it.  I’ve been aggressively pruning affected branches and have applied two treatments of fungicide thus far.

I gave up on my zucchini and cantaloupe.  The cantaloupe germinated then immediately shriveled up and died.  I replanted the zucchini three times, only to have my husband till over the mound right after the third planting then proceed to dump some extra manure in that spot.  However, I had two vigorous tomato volunteers that I transplanted to that area in front of the cabbage last week, and I just noticed a third today among the beans that I’ll move there too, as soon as I get the chance.  So though it didn’t quite go as planned, the space that was allotted to zucchini and cantaloupe won’t be wasted.  And the little tomato plants should love that manure that my husband smothered my zucchini with.

You might also notice there are also a few gaps in the bean rows.  I put a few seeds in those areas last week as well and they should be germinating shortly.  They will just be harvested later, that’s all.  We usually get a couple flushes of beans, so once the plants get to full size I doubt we’ll notice much difference.  I also had to replant my carrots.  Another case of germinate-and-shrivel, I believe.  But we usually don’t put in our crop of carrots until later in the season (typically after a crop of lettuce or radishes has run its course), so all is well there.

My husband cleaned up the rest of that ash tree and balsam fir that he took down a week or so ago.  He tilled up the ground under what was the balsam, flattened it, and seeded in some grass.  He also pruned the remaining balsam because it had some broken branches from the falling ash tree.  Looks a little different than the last time I showed you, doesn’t it?

Remember all those flower bulbs I planted?  I’m getting my first flowers from those – my calla lilies!  The pack I bought was a mix so I didn’t know what colors they were going to be.  I figured with my luck they would all turn out to be plain white, but they’re all a really pretty pink so I’m happy!  So, here’s a picture that isn’t just green and brown, just do me a favor and pretend there aren’t weeds all over behind it!

So how is your garden doing?  Any particular successes or flops so far?