Seeds Up!

Thanks to the good rain, the rattlesnake beans, zucchini, and okra seeds shot out of the ground sometime between Sunday evening and Tuesday afternoon. 

Today, I hammered metal fence posts into the ground along the bean rows and strung wire between them, top and bottom.  As soon as I can find my roll of jute (or buy another one), I'm going to make a web between the two wires for the beans to climb. 

The garden is looking really good.  Corn is shoulder high, but isn't "tassling" yet.  Squash are producing.  Tomatoes are coming along.  Cucumbers are blooming, and here and there I'm seeing tiny little pickles.  The peppers are peppering.  The volunteer butterpeas are blooming.  Even the carrots are doing well!

No sign of any bugs today, except one squash bug.  I picked him off and crushed him with my shoe.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll need to spray fungicide again to stay ahead of the blight.

More Rain

The chatter at work this morning was mostly about the creek-raising rain we got last night.

"Y'all can thank me for that," I said.  "I sprayed the garden yesterday morning."

From across the room, quiet-voiced Esther said, "Nope.  *I* did it."

I raised my eyebrows.  "What did you do?"

"I shot a snake," she said.  "And hung it, belly up, on the fence."

I had to concede that a snake-shooting trumps a garden-spraying.  Way to go, Esther!

Rain

It's raining right now.  Sort of.  It's an indecisive rain, one that falls intermittently between bouts of sunshine.  But it's rain, and we need it.  I heard the weatherman say that we're 12" behind for the year.  This should bring up the okra and rattlesnake beans I planted this week.

It's also going to wash off the fungicide and insecticide that I sprayed yesterday.  I'll have to do it all over again this weekend.  :-\ 

Actually, it's not a bad thing in terms of the squash.  After doing some reading, I'm not certain that the "BT" stuff I sprayed will kill squash bugs.  I bought a different kind of insecticide today, one that's supposed to be "eco-friendly" (though I'm not sure that the words "insecticide" and "eco-friendly" belong in the same sentence, unless there's a "not" between them).

Maintenance, Rattlesnake Beans, and Zucchini

Today was a beautiful day, so much cooler than the previous few days.  I was in the garden by 4 p.m., tilling up two rows for the rattlesnake beans that have been sitting on my kitchen table for weeks.  (I decided not to plant it with the corn, reasoning that if the raccoons take down the corn, they'll take down the beans with it.)  Just as I finished the tilling, I looked across the garden and noticed that two of my squash plants had wilted since yesterday.  I turned off the tiller and went for a closer look.  It appeared that both plants had been nicked with a hoe.  This was something of a relief, as I had feared the damage was from cutworms. 

But while I was inspecting the plant stems, I found bugs.  Many of them were copulating.  Some had already copulated, evidenced by little patches of brown eggs I saw on a few of the leaves.  I nearly had a stroke.

Luckily, I had stopped by the garden center for supplies - fungicide, insecticide, and fertilizer. 

Four hours later, the garden had been fungicided, BTd, and fertilized, and the beans had been planted.  We ought to be good to go for a week or more.

Before I sprayed, I picked about half a dozen squash, enough for our supper and Nanny's.  We sauteed ours with onions and ate it with Mexican cornbread.  Yum.

@!^%#

See the two vehicles in this picture?  My garden is between them and behind them about 100 feet. 

See the field?  A farmer rented this field from Nanny a few weeks ago.  Last Saturday, he planted soybeans using the "no-till" method.  The next day, he came back and sprayed broadleaf grass killer.  He told Nanny that he would spray low to the ground, and it would not damage anything in her yard.

The following Tuesday, this is how my corn looked:

The cucumbers and squash got a dose, too.

I was madder than a hornet.

Thankfully, the big shed and a smaller tool shed blocked the spray from most of the garden, but some of the chemical drifted through a gap between the tool shed and the tree line.  The entire rows of squash, cucumbers, and corn got it, all the way to the far end of the garden.  It looks like these plants are going to survive, but I'm still mad.  And the worst may be yet to come.  Once the beans sprout, he's planning to come back with Round-Up in his tank.  I don't know what to do to protect my garden, except to stretch black plastic across the "gap," and judging from how far the first herbicide drifted, this tactic may not be enough.

* * * * * *

"You're up mighty early," Nanny called from the back porch a few seconds after I walked past her kitchen window this morning. 

"I'm trying to hit the garden before the sun does," I said.  My plan was to chop around the plants, run the tiller up the middles, and then do some serious watering.  I went to the tool shed, grabbed my favorite hoe, and started chopping weeds on the pepper row.  A few minutes later, I looked up to find Nanny working among the cucumbers.  Together we made pretty short work of the squash and cucumber rows.  Nanny started on the corn rows while I went to drag the tiller out of the shed.

"How big does corn have to be before it can be laid by?" Nanny asked me as I was gassing up the tiller.

"I don't know," I said.  "What does 'laid by' mean?"

"It means we can quit chopping it."

"Oh.  Well, I think that corn can be laid by the day after Memorial Day," I told her.  Since today is Memorial Day, it brought us both a measure of relief.

About an hour later, The Husband showed up and offered to finish the tilling.  I let him, and started laying out the soaker hose among the cucumbers.  By the time I finished laying out the hoses and getting the water going, he'd finished the tilling and had picked up the hoe that I'd laid aside.  In a few minutes, I heard Nanny call to The Husband, "I see you over there, leaning on your hoe in the shade."  Before either of us could respond, she added, "Oh my goodness...I just heard my mama talking."

"You sounded just like her," The Husband said.

I did not know Grandmaw, so I wisely kept my mouth shut.

But I looked up a few minutes later, and caught them both leaning on their hoes in the shade.

It took me about two more hours to finish the watering.  During this time, I sank in the mud as I moved the soaker hoses from row to row.  It's a miracle I got out with my shoes.

Squash Blossoms

My boss turned me loose early today (bless her), and I've spent the afternoon running the tiller in the garden, working on my farmer tan. 

The oldest of the squash plants - the batch that came up from the first planting - have squash on them!  I bet we'll be eating them by next weekend.

The corn is a good foot tall.    As I was tilling  past it, I wondered if my idea about interplanting it with pole beans is a good idea.  It is almost a sure bet that the raccoons will eventually push the cornstalks over; when that happens, the beans will go down with the corn, and that will be one confounded mess.  

I've been trying to think of ways to foil the raccoons.  What I need is about three mean Dobermans.  ;)

Happy Carrot Day!

Guess what?  WE HAVE CARROTS!  Having never actually seen a growing carrot, I almost didn't recognize them and *almost* chopped them down when I was weeding today - had the hoe poised to decapitate them when it occurred to me what they were. 

I replanted the butterbeans today.  Only 1/3 of the original planting have come up.  As I was digging a drill between the skips, I uncovered a good many beans which had swollen and shot out a tap root.  Maybe I planted them too deep.  In any case, I planted about three times as many seeds as I needed to fill the gaps, hoping that enough will sprout to fill out the rows. 

Sunday, I discovered that one of my store-bought tomatoes was withering and had spots on the leaves.  I yanked him out and tossed him in the woods.  All the rest of the plants look healthy.  The "volunteers" have tomatoes on them, already, some almost big enough to fry.  Today, I sprayed fungicide again.

The corn is about a foot tall now.  I have packets of zucchini and rattlesnake beans that I intend to plant soon.  Before I plant the beans, I want to pick Uncle Jack's brain about their growing habits, as he grows them and will know how they act.  Maybe I'll see him at the softball field before the week is up, and we can talk a little gardening before our granddaughters' games.

Lastly, I'll send out a great big "thank-you" shout to whoever sharpened my hoe.  I sho'nuff appreciate it.