The Very Latest

We have had a little liquid heaven in the last 10 days or so, and while I am thankful for it, the total accumulation is not even an inch. A couple of times the dirt has actually changed to a darker color, but there is nothing that could remotely resemble mud going on here.

Our first crop to arrive in any quantity is summer squash. Mike started transplants of yellow crookneck and a lovely scalloped pattypan squash; he also direct seeded both of those plus an Italian zucchini. The tranplants have been bearing now for a couple of weeks. (Those plants direct seeded look good but are still a few weeks away from production.) The squash tastes great and I have roasted and stuffed the pattypan a couple of times. It has a nice sweetness that comes out when it's roasted.

The lettuce, which we can't eat quickly enough to keep up with, has begun to bolt, or so have the largest heads. The tomato plants look good and we completed the trellis this week for all nine rows. Yes, we have close to 300 tomato plants in the ground. The cherry tomato plants have begun to set fruit and I am anxiously awaiting the first hint of color. How else do you know it's summer?

In the tomato bed we have 7 or 8 volunteer watermelon and/or canteloupe plants that have situated themselves close to a drip irrigation source. This same field last year was given over to the johnson grass weeds that popped up instead of the corn we actually planted (this was the second corn planting that we lost to last summer's drought....are you catching a theme here?) The summer before that, in '05, for those still hanging with me, we planted watermelon and canteloupe in that field.

We knew there were a few volunteer melon plants of unknown varieties that grew in with the johnson grass, but the weeds got so high and thick we gave up on trying to find any actual melons. These little volunteers that are showing themselves now are second generation to the last melon seeds we bought in '05. Don't you love heirloom, open-pollinated plants? I am fairly certain I have at least two different varieties this summer by looking at the leaves. And since we have drip irrigation around the tomatoes and we keep that area weeded well (ok, weeded), we should be able to harvest something. I'll keep you posted on what they turn out to be.

I have harvested a few potatoes from my potato bed and while I'll do things differently this fall when I plant more, I am generally pleased with the outcome.

There's more going on and I'll just have to check back in by early next week to post those details. The chickens are growing and the roosters are crowing and the beans are blooming, and life is good. I hope yours is.

Will It Ever Rain Again?

We are now approaching the end of our third week with no measurable rainfall. The last measurable amount we had was a quarter inch, and that was after two weeks of no precipitation. In that it's been six weeks since I last posted a blog entry, I would explain most of that time away being outside watering the garden trying to keep everything alive, and the rest either educating my children or goofing off.

The beets germinated nicely and are coming along fine after stalling in the first two weeks of April due to the cold weather. My potato plants took about a month to send up replacement green shoots to repair the freezing damage. I lost three or four, but all three varieties came back in some form.

The chard looks to be a little slow and thin. Disappointing. The Isar yellow wax beans have germinated nicely but seem to have stalled in this protracted dry period. Thus the daily watering. My okra (three varieties) has hardly germinated at all, with maybe ten plants popping up out of five 40 foot rows. Even okra needs some moisture to germinate!

We are three-quarters done with putting tomatoes into the ground and the Matt's Wild Cherry are already starting to bloom, so we should not be too far into June before we see some fruit. That will make me very happy.

On a bit of a whim, I ordered 100 organic strawberry crowns from Seeds of Change and they are beginning to sprout green leaves. I have water going on them now, which reminds me I need to move the sprinkler.

On a poultry note, the chickens are doing very well and growing like weeds (or weeds when we get rain....even the weeds are not growing much!) They are fiesty and fast and funny. The one remaining Pearl Leghorn Rooster found his voice the last week and he gives a very Peter Bradyish "cockadoodledoo!!!" almost on command. He's not loud enough yet to hear from the house, but when I check on them in the morning, he's more than willing to show off. The rest of the roosters have been slower to mature than this fella, so I'm sure he's feeling pretty superior.

Must make more of an effort in the next few days to journal. I'm off to move the water around and harvest a head of lettuce for supper.

A Little Rain from Heaven

Sunday brought us a wonderfully wet day with slow soft showers from early morning until middle of the afternoon. The seeds we planted Saturday got watered in pretty well and we irrigated again on Monday evening just to keep them moist. Meanwhile, the beans in the raised beds have already sprouted. And those seeds were left overs from late last summer!

Last night brought more rain and some thunder/lightening, too, pretty late. Got the Jim Cantore phone call from the Weather Channel at 12:00 midnight saying there was a thunderstorm warning for our area for the next hour. I really like that feature they offer and the fee is not much. Living with no TV for a month and keeping the radio off, too, makes for an uninformed housewife. On most things lately, that's good. On severe weather, not so much. And doubly so in the middle of the night!

Anyway, I strawed the potatoes again and I need to transplant the lettuce, if it's not already past the point at which that will work. I'm not much of a salad gardener; I'm much better with beans and tomatoes, but I love the greens (from a consumption perspective) and therefore I need to acquire some experience. Will document the success (or failure) of that project upon it's completion.

Beets/Chard/Carrots/Haricot Vert

All of the above got planted today on two very nice raised beds out in the ground garden, made by Mike's new tractor implement. Except the beans. They went into a freshly de-weeded raised wooded beds. I did the bean planting the Square Foot Garden method (mostly) by dividing up the 4'x12' bed into 48 squares. In each square, I planted four Straight and Narrow haricot vert green beans from Pinetree Seeds. The SFG book indicated that I could plant nine seeds/plants per square foot, but I think that's a little tight so I spaced them out more.

The beets are Red Ace and Golden Specialty and the chard is Bright Lights, all from Johnny's Selected Seeds. The carrots are SugarSnax and Nelson, also from Johnny's. We planted the Nelson last year and had some seed leftover. They were ok, but I have high hopes for the Sugarsnax.

Last prayers before bed are for the rain that looks like will come tomorrow. It will be wildly applauded and much appreciated.

T-Minus 21 Days.....

...and counting, until April 21 and the Frost Free Day arrives here in Zone 7A. We had ten straight days last week and this of high 70's/low 80's temps and nice sunshine. (A cold front moved through on Friday, but it's warming up again today.) We moved all the seedlings outside to take advantage of ideal growing conditions and they have rewarded us with some stunning growth.

Just Monday morning, I counted 23 squash plants that had germinated; the end of that same day, the count was up to 40! I wish I'd had a video camera on them. I don't think I would have had to speed up the film much at all to see the plant pushing through the top of the starting mix. National Gerographic slow-motion action. By the end of the week, the count was closer to 60. That's a lot of squash!

Perhaps we're delusional, but we've convinced ourselves there won't be another cold snap harsh enough that we can't cover our seedlings and save them. So later today we're planting carrots, beets, lettuce and chard and we will transplant a large number of the squash if we have time. The weather report shows rain tomorrow, which we need desperately, so we're working ahead of wet soil for the next couple of days. Chop chop.

On tap for when it's too wet to work outside: start the herbs. Basil, rosemary, chives and a couple others.