July 2020

July 6

Not much gardening will happen today. It's all about mowing grass. When the day is over I'll be whupped. I'm hoping to get the front yard mowed as well. That will be three yards today. Granted Bradley will be mowing two of them but still it seems to drain my energy just emptying the bag for the lawn mower. 

 I did get all the backyard garden plants watered last night. I really should spend more evenings working on the Urban Ranch outside maintenance. I need to do some weed cleanup. 

 The corn looks good but there is a family of raccoons in the neighborhood that people seem to not just tolerate but love. They do love sweet corn and I expect that they will think it was grown just for them. I have harvested three zucchinis with more on the way without the vine borer making an appearance. Maybe planting it near the onions has made a difference. 

The cucumbers are looking good with tiny little cukes on the vines. I haven't been to Terra Nova Gardens for about a week so I don't know how the cucumbers are doing there. I have the squash seeds that need to be planted and will try to do that before Sherry gets here.

Round two for bell peppers and tomatoes have been planted in bed two at the Urban Ranch. I do need to mulch them in to keep the moisture level in the soil at a even level. 

The bucket tomatoes look like last year with the curling leaves which MiGardener says its not a bad thing. It just looks to me like an unhealthy thing. It's from hot weather. The plant tries to conserve water in the leaves by curling. The tomatoes and blossoms do still look good but I'm just not used to have a plant that looks to be stressed out.

July 24

This is the corn harvest for the day and the accumulative harvest of zucchini. I think the zucchini is finally done with setting fruits. I've never had a harvest like this before the vine borers take it down. They weren't a problem this year so I've really gotten a haul. I give the glory to the onions that were planted near by and were over taken by the zucchini plants. I'm hoping that I have discovered a natural way to circumvent the dreaded vine borer of Nebraska. It would be an amazing discovery. 

This is just two zucchini plants that have overgrown the front of the bed and over shadowed half of the onion bed behind them. Actually there's four plants there. When I planted them I put two seeds in each spot and all four grew into plants. It doesn't seem to bother the plants to be crowded together. In fact it seems that they kind of like it. I'm going to try it again next year to see if it was just a fluke or if I actually have discovered some thing..

Here you can see how the zucchini bullied the onions but they still survived. Onions are a hardy plant. I will say the onions under the shadow of the zucchini are smaller but still of usable size. It's a fair trade off to keep the vine borers at bay. 

The onions and zucchini seem to coexist well together. It's difficult to believe that onions have actually matured. It's the first time I have actually grown onions from seed to maturity. 

The onion harvest is in. Not bad by any means. I can still remember that frosty day last February when the tiny little seeds were carefully put in the trays to begin there journey to maturity. I can remember the day when the first little sprouts popped up out of the dirt and started to grow. Then the grooming of the little plants by snipping a tiny bit off the top to keep the onion stalk strong and straight was a weekly task. Finally in May the day came when the tiny little sprouts were set out in the world and left to fend for themselves in the warm days, cold nights, and rain storms. They grew straight and strong until the longest day of the year came (June 21st). Then it was time to put all their strength into fattening up the bulb. As the days passed the bulbs grew and grew into nice plump onions. Having done their very best at maturing the once strong and straight stalks began to bend and break which is a sure sign that they're done growing and it's harvest time. A lot has happened in the world from the time the tiny little onion seed became the mature onion plant. It's nice to know that in the middle of a chaotic world that nature is still doing what it's supposed to do. The rabbits are still trying to eat my plants, the raccoons are still attempting to steal my sweet corn, and weeds have launched another assault to take over the garden.

The joy of growing a garden is being able to give away some of the produce to neighbors, friends, and family. The neighbor just came over and took home a zucchini, YEA, some corn and onions. It trills me to see that happen. The onions are now drying out on the picnic table in the back yard. I'm hoping not to have any rain for a few days. One thing I learned this year is that onions don't start growing their bulb until after the longest day of the year. The time before that is when the plant is growing and getting the strength to form the bulb

July 25

Here's the harvest for today. It's 20 ears of sweet corn from Terra Nova Gardens. I've already eaten about 1/2 a dozen and given away about 8 or 10 ears to Neighbor Tim. I will process these by blanching and freezing the ears in Ziploc bags. I think there's about that many left to harvest by the time the second wave is done. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn't have another full bed of sweet corn. The corn has not been molested by the raccoons again this year. The electric fence does a good job. Now that I have a solar panel the battery was super charged up when I tested it today. I still have about another month of corn protection until all the corn is harvested. 

Corn in the kettle boiling hot

Five minutes cooking and then it's not.

Icy cold is what it's got

Destined for frozen is it's lot.

Yes, I am terrible at poetry. It was not even remotely some thing I liked in school but I've drawn to dabble with terrible rhymes for many years. So anyway there's 20 ears with more on the way. I have enough to nibble on in the back yard and still I have maybe another 20 at least at Terra Nova Gardens. That's 20 meals of corn with two ears each meal. 

July 30

Another summer harvest. I'm thinking the zucchini is done and the plants need to come out. It will free up the bed for perhaps a fall crop of some thing that's quick to grow. If I don't doddle too long I could plant some green beans. There's always salad greens but I have those in the basement area. It's some thing that I've not done. Fall gardening is different than Spring gardening. 

Cucumbers are producing their meager harvest so my thought is to make some refrigerator pickles. I've not done that before but they look easy enough. It gives a pickle that has more crunch which I like. The canned pickles just don't have the crunch that store pickles have. I like the crunch.

This batch of corn was just bagged and frozen. My research says that the unblenched corn will be just fine for short storage. The long term storage is where the unblenched corn enzymes start causing the taste and texture to change.

This is the drying rack in the basement for the onions. It's just window screen stretched over the frame of the seed starting station. I run a fan on them for a time to help with the drying process. It worked really good and soon I will braid the onions and hang them up for storage. I hope to continue this process again next year.