Catalogs!!!

I have seed catalogs-- woohoo!

Johnny's Selected Seeds, Seed Savers, The Cook's Garden, and Burpee are all here.

I can't wait for Spring.

Looking back...

Well, I planted Burpee Ambrosia hybrid corn, and that was a winner. Very tasty.

However, I must not plant Burpee zucchini next year. All of my zucchini plants were infected with a fungus, and I didn't get one single zucchini. (This was especially weird because I planted in multiple beds-- the plants were seperated by at least 100 yards. They were on opposite ends of the growing beds, and so many plants were in between that the only way to explain this was yucky seed.)

Tonight, I once again made my neighbors wonder. (It's a good thing that they can only hear me and not see me.) I was getting myself some potato salad tonight when I noticed some movement in the backyard. Then I saw that it was three adult deer and a fawn eating from my garden. Which meant I had to get my crazy on.

I opened my patio door and yelled. And they just looked at me. So then I ran at them, yelling and waving my hands. (If I ran at you, yelling and waving my hands, I think you would run as well...)

So I'm the crazy garden lady in my neighborhood.

Harvest

Some people count the days or look at their plants to figure out when to harvest.

Not me.

I wait until the deer start to nibble. But perhaps the better term would be mow.

The good news is that deer leave potatoes alone. The bad news is that they consider the corn free game.

On July 19th, I harvested my corn. I lost about about 9 ears, but ended up getting two coolers full of ears. (It translated to roughly two gallons of corn in the freezer.) On July 21st, I pulled all of the fingerling potatoes, LaRatte and French. Awesome harvest of potatoes, especially considering the lunch bag of seed potatoes that I got from the Maine Potato Lady. (I love the Potato Lady!)

Yum.

Hmm...

Things are popping up. Last year's lemon balm (replanted) is now knee-high. Corn is popping up, as are beans, beets, chantarais melons, and cucumbers. The zucchini is bustin' out (as only zucchini can).

The suprise is the performance of the fingerling potatoes. They are absolutely incredible-- easily 9 inches tall. Wow. They obviously enjoyed the cool, moist weather.

No production from the peas yet. The watering continues.

Weeds

Umm... not the show on Showtime.

I mean the real thing. The insidious plants that taunt me all summer long.

I don't know how it is that I can work hard to grow what I want to grow, while these weeds keep popping up to tease me.

I already am growing a healthy crop in both of my back garden beds. I have fingerling potato plants (6 inches high with about 6 leaves apiece, woohoo!). I think I might have more weeds growing that actual plants that I mean to have in the garden beds.

It might be a long growing season this year.

A New Perspective on Horror Movies

We have a small herd of sneaky, sneaky deer in my neighborhood. The stealth deer come in and mow down my cilantro, my lettuce, or whatever tender green shoots I have growing.

They tipped me over the edge when they mowed down my corn about 10 days before harvest. Two. years. in. a. row.

So this year I pulled out the big guns. I ordered this special stuff I discovered at Johnny's Selected Seeds when I visited Maine. When I first saw it, I didn't want to fly with the stuff. (Can you imagine taking that through security?) Remembered the name, so I could order it.

Product was ordered this year, and I opened the green bottle a couple of weeks ago. As I began to spray around, I thought I should look at the label in case my 3-year-old got curious and played with it. (Goodness knows, it stunk to high heaven.)

Well, it had an active ingredient. It contains 3% porcine blood. That's right folks, I paid good money for pig blood. In a vegetable oil solution.

Remember when they collected the pig blood in the movie Carrie? I truly do not know how they could not retch the entire time. Seriously. The 3% blood and oil solution makes my stomach do some flips as I spray. How could they have a huge bucket of the stuff and no one noticed?

Carrie is now ruined forever. I just won't be able to suspend belief.

Spring...

It's Springtime, and many seeds have been planted. I'm starting some seeds on the back deck-- Italian heirloom and Amish paste tomatoes, and Fish hot peppers. I've already stuck yellow squash and zucchini, pickling cucumbers, red beets, pod and snap peas in the ground. Also in are La Ratte and French fingerling potatoes. (Both are fingerling varieties.) My seeds were ordered from Seed Savers and Johnny's Selected Seeds. The potatoes came from the Maine potato lady.

DH and I have recently expanded our planting area by putting in a new garden bed. I still have more to plant.

My efforts are being thwarted right now by weather extremes. It was cool and rainy, followed by super-hot temperatures, and we'll be returning to cool and rainy tomorrow.

I hope it all survives.