Nowadays, of course, with modern technology, hybrids, and fertilizer, such quaint adages hardly seem to apply any more... except for small homesteaders in cooler climates using heirloom breeds.
So how's our corn doing? Here's Younger Daughter's knees:
If this is any indication, I guess we'll have a decent crop of corn this year.
So how's the rest of the garden doing? C'mon, I'll give you a tour.
The corn pictured above is one of nine tires of corn. Younger Daughter was standing in the best-looking tire. The rest range from decent...
...to not-so-decent. We'll see how this scraggly corn does.
Yesterday morning I stepped outside at dawn to release the chickens, and what should I see in the garden? A DEER. Grrrr. She ricocheted around, frantically searching for a way out, bouncing in a terrifying fashion into the fences. I had my camera in my pocket and snatched it out to take a shot of her as she was tangled four feet up in a fence, looking like a giant struggling fly in a spiderweb, when she miraculously managed to break loose and escape outside the wire, unhurt.
I had some damage to repair.
But how did she get in? I had aproned the fence eight feet high. Where I ran out of chicken wire, I criss-crossed baling twine. Surely she didn't jump higher than eight feet?
A quick survey showed the fence nailed to the side of the loafing shed had come loose. Doubtless she squeezed herself through this, the wily minx.
Thankfully she must have just gotten in when I stepped outside and saw her, because the damage was minimal. She had only eaten down some of the strawberry leaves. Of course. It's always the strawberries that get eaten down first. Must taste like candy.
Here's a verifying hoofprint, one of many. Guilty!
So Don hammered the fencing back to the loafing shed, and I re-patched loose areas, and we'll see how things go. While I was patching, I noticed this eastern Kingbird and this Robin, quarreling. The Kingbird was winning despite being smaller.
The Kingbird perched triumphantly on the fence by the pond...
...and the Robin took a bath.
Anyway, on with the tour. The strawberries seem to dominate the garden. Three hundred plants in ten big tractor tire halves will do that.
The plants are growing strongly and putting out runners...
...and some gorgeous fruit. Not a lot, yet, but then the plants are still young. I'm aware that I'd get more fruit if I pinched off the runners, but this year I'm more interested in cultivating plants than I am in acquiring fruit, so I'll let the plants do what they will.
For the older strawberries in the two raised beds, they're recovering from being ravaged by deer last fall. This is the less-damaged bed...
...and this is the more-damaged bed.
Younger Daughter hunts for ripe strawberries.
The raspberries are astoundingly thick with little green fruits.
The blueberry bushes are bursting with greenish berries.
They're just barely starting to flush with blue.
I'm also getting a lot of sprouts, which pleases me, since I (so far) haven't had any luck propagating blueberry bushes from cuttings.
Some of my onions (grown from sets). I have two large and one small tire of onions.
This particular tire has a volunteer tomato plant growing in it, since I grew tomatoes here last year.
Herbs. I have thyme, parsley, sage, and oregano, all of which overwintered.
I have four herb beds that I seeded with basil I saved from last year's plants. It's just barely starting to sprout, but by the end of summer they'll be full and luxurious.
Peppers. A couple of the pepper plants died...
...but the rest are thriving.
One even has a tiny flower on it.
I planted four types of beans: green, pinto, navy, and black. This is a baby green bean, just emerging...
...and a slightly older one with its leaves unfurled.
I have sixteen broccoli plants which are bushing out nicely.
Here are the potatoes -- four large tractor tires. I have about 130 plants in these four tires. I also found I have a bunch of volunteer plants spread around from where some small potatoes landed last year after I harvested.
The peas are doing terrible. I have 28 tires planted with peas, seven peas per tire for a total of 196 plants. Only a few have come up, and they're very small even though I planted them on June 13. Peas like cooler weather, and I have a feeling I just planted them too late, just in time for too much heat.
The beans -- all four types -- are doing much better. They practically sprinted out of the ground, even though I only planted them June 27. I planted about 700 beans (spread between the four types) and at least 3/4 are up.
This is horseradish. The deer ate it down to nubbins last fall, but it overwintered very well and sprang back up strongly. Notice the contrast with this tractor tire, which doesn't have tarp and gravel around it to control the weeds outside the tire.
I have eight tomato plants. I also have cages for when they're big enough to need them. It's my hope to purchase a food strainer/sauce maker this fall, and make some proper tomato sauce.
My "viney plants" aren't doing so well. The watermelon, though healthy, is very small.
Ditto with the cantaloup. I don't know if they'll grow fast enough to provide fruit before the frost hits.
The pumpkins, however, are growing with great gusto.
Notice this line of weeds next to one of the pumpkin tires? That's a split in the billboard vinyl. Shows the dramatic affect the vinyl has on cutting weeds.
Last but not least, the garlic. It's just about time to cut the scapes off.
That's it (so far) for the garden. I can't even begin to describe how much better everything is growing with weed control, deer control, and raised beds (tires). We have lots more room in the garden, and lots more tires and tarps (we ran out of gravel). Next year we're going to try planting fruit trees in some ginormous tractor tires; plant oil sunflowers; expand the number of corn beds and bean beds; and otherwise push to make this garden provide all our vegetable and fruit needs.
