Disclaimer. Not mine but local grown. My friend bought the first of the season sweet corn at auction and I got some from her. Supper tonight.
A poem I studied in college... Attack of the squash people by Marge Piercy And thus the people every year in the valley of humid July did sacrifice themselves to the long green phallic god and eat and eat and eat. They’re coming, they’re on us, the long striped gourds, the silky babies, the hairy adolescents, the lumpy vast adults like the trunks of green elephants. Recite fifty zucchini recipes! Zucchini tempura; creamed soup; sauté with olive oil and cumin, tomatoes, onion; frittata; casserole of lamb; baked topped with cheese; marinated; stuffed; stewed; driven through the heart like a stake. Get rid of old friends: they too have gardens and full trunks. Look for newcomers: befriend them in the post office, unload on them and run. Stop tourists in the street. Take truckloads to Boston. Give to your Red Cross. Beg on the highway: please take my zucchini, I have a crippled mother at home with heartburn. Sneak out before dawn to drop them in other people’s gardens, in baby buggies at church doors. Shot, smuggling zucchini into mailboxes, a federal offense. With a suave reptilian glitter you bask among your raspy fronds sudden and huge as alligators. You give and give too much, like summer days limp with heat, thunderstorms bursting their bags on our heads, as we salt and freeze and pickle for the too little to come.
All gardens planted 2 minutes ago as the spring was much like the winter? Something to do at 7am on a Sunday.
Made room for 96 cucumber plants. Got 48 in tonight before the bugs found me. We'll see when the rain starts tomorrow. Plan to drop twine from EMT conduit across the tops of the T posts. Was 60 year old sod a week ago.
Made room for 100 cucumber plants (not 96). Got the rest in this AM before the rain. Plus 15 more to grow up concrete reinforcement fence like I usually do: Plus I found some seed potatoes hanging on for dear life peeking out of a bag on a shelf living on humidity and the potato carcasses that I remember putting in the bag but not when so there was some room at the end of the row for 6 of them. Then I cut two lawns.
I think I had 44 and have about 10 stuck in so far. Usually 2 at the end of wide rows and then the rest here and there, sometimes even in a pot, although I'm trying to have fewer pots this year. I have a flower bed that will some day be all day lillies that all the extra flowers get stuck into if they don't have homes by 1 July. The last two years I've transplanted about 10 day lilies and then get caught up in other things. I have 50 or 60 pink wave petunias too. I like drip and timers.
Do you prune all the side shoots off ? I did last year with all my verticals and had pretty good results. I don't need to make any pickles this year. I plan to do the same with these slicers this year.
I never have and I know they yield better. The plants you see there is about half of what I usually plant and last year they yielded about 350 cukes. More than I need for pickles. Once I get moved I will be more limited on space and I will have to employ some new techniques. Your gardens are very impressive.
Did a little cultivating in a couple of sweet corn patches today. They weren't really weedy but trying to stay ahead of them. This is a new variety of yellow corn called inferno I'm trying this year.
Hey got a question for you guys. Got an invasive weed that throws out runners. It has now gotten into a small flower bed that has bleeding heart Bush and peonies. Once both of those have finish flowering, can I cut them back and then hit the weeds with roundup?
We have a bind weed problem. When it is in the flowers I do this: Get a good pair of rubber/neoprene gloves. Get a cotton glove that fits over the rubber glove. Mix up a spray bottle of 2-4D. Spray your thumb and index finger on the cotton glove. Get the cotton saturated. Then carefully just pinch the leaves of the weeds. Just need to show some moisture on them and call it good. They will die. Forget Roundup. It is killing the planet. Already a known cancer agent. It is firmly into OUR food chain. Maybe the cause of loss of bees.
The Mrs decided we would not do a garden this year, so I planted it to a cover crop of field peas and oats. They have grown very well in this wet weather, 3’ high and solid cover. I tried to feed the peas to the cows but they turned up their noses. I think I’ll flail chop it, plow, and try some buckwheat.
