Hello Everyone. I hope you are doing well these days and that you are having a good week. Is Summer galloping along for you like it has been for us? Hard to believe our local schools begin for the next school year in just one week. We have enjoyed this summer with family, cook-outs, traveling and also working in my garden.
Our front yard filled with the green of Summertime.
And lots of summer green in the back yard looking down the hill.
If you walk down the patio steps and turn to
the left, and walk down the lane we arrive at the vegetable garden.
Each year my husband takes the tractor and plows the garden getting ready for vegetable seed planting. Then in a week or so he plows again making sure the soil is tilled and ready for planting. A couple of years ago he brought in a truckload of mushroom compost and then re-plowed in order to mix the compost thoroughly in with the soil. Mushroom compost in our area is used for enriching the soil.
In the below photo you can see the very tall fence my husband designed in order to prevent the deer from getting into the garden. Unfortunately, it does not keep the raccoons out. I will share with you later on what we did to discourage all the other critters from getting in the garden.
Years ago I planted gladiolus bulbs in each corner of the garden.
The below photo shows one of the surviving plants blooming on the garden gate.
We are blessed to have a wonderful gardening store right in the heart of our downtown area. This wonderful seed and feed store is what remains of the days when so many folks in our area had a farm or a garden and raised livestock. Folks can still buy food for their horses, cattle, goats, chickens, dogs and rabbits.
They can also buy seeds to grow fruits, vegetables and herbs. There are many other items available at this 100 year old store such as galvanized wash tubs and hand tools.
On our way into the store we pass by garden sprinklers, fertilizer spreaders, and pots for planting.
What I love about visiting here is you feel like you are stepping back in time by the timeless charm of this old building.
As you enter you can see the wooden floors of this old store. I have a feeling they are the original floors from when this store was first constructed back in 1915. There was a big celebration a couple of years ago when Gramlings turned 100 years old.
In this photo you see the seed packets on each side of the entrance to the store.
And in the bottom photo we see more seeds to choose from located toward the back of the store.
This is where I come to find the seeds for my garden each year.
Below we see a view to the side of the entrance to Gramlings. You can see the old tin roof.
It looks like it could be the original tin used on this old building.
My main reason for visiting is to find the "Sweet Corn" seeds that I LOVE to grow. I usually find all the other seeds for the rest of the garden as well. And, they also have a large selection of vegetable plants located in an outside section.
As you can see from the photo below you can purchase just a few
seeds for your home garden or enough to plant acres.
There are many pecan trees growing in our area. I thought it was
interesting to see this "Pecan Picker" available here also.
After purchasing sweet corn seeds from Gramlings, I prepared the garden and planted six rows of the sweet corn seeds with the rows being about 20 feet long each. In the below photo we see the rows of corn beginning to come up nicely. The recommended spacing for the corn rows is about 36 inches apart.
Instructions say to plant corn seeds about 12 inches apart. Looks like these seeds were planted a little closer than the instructions indicated. They recommend thinning plants if too close together. I did not do that this year, but really should because then there is room for each plant to adequately grow and pollinate.
There are other seeds planted in the garden as well. There are
green beans, cucumbers, okra, squash and sunflower seeds.
Just as the sweet corn was coming up nicely we had a huge rain storm associated with strong winds.
As you can see all of the rows of corn were blown over almost flat on the ground.
My husband and I got busy and staked the corn back up as best as we could We took heavy string and pulled the stalks of corn back up with support from the string tied to metal stakes on each end of each row as seen in the below photo. By the next day the sunshine had helped the corn straighten up even more.
My husband reminded me we had a grocery store not too far away from us that sold delicious sweet corn. I do know that, BUT, to me it is the greatest pleasure placing that seed in the ground and watching the miracles happen even if it is a lot of work.
The below photo shows what the corn stalks look like when the pollination process is about to begin. All of those little seed-like things open and spill pollen down over the corn that is beginning to grow.
As I understand the process each one of those white tassels
must be pollinated for the corn to grow completely.
We have had so much rain in our area I am sure the pollination process was not complete.
Each year the pesky raccoons find their way into the corn patch and help themselves. This year I
happened to find a product at Walmart that looked like it was worth a try.
If you could take a whiff of this Repels-All you would immediately understand how it works. The ingredients are eggs, garlic and some other bad smelling ingredients. The smell itself is enough to keep anything out of the garden. It just smells awful, but apparently is not harmful to plants or critters.
My husband found the spray shown in the below photo. It too is a deterrent
for all the critters including raccoons because it smells so bad.
So of all things this year the critters did not get the corn as it ripened. However, due to all the rain the corn was not completely pollinated and the whole corn cob did not fill in completely.
They say that when the corn tassels at the top turn brown it is time to pick the corn.
So I got busy and picked every one I could find.
So I got busy and picked every one I could find.
Since all of the corn tassels apparently had not completely pollinated the entire cob did not fill in.
As you can see, only about one-third of the cob filled in with corn kernels.
Someone told me you can drop the corn in boiling water for one minute and then
it is ready to go into the freezer to be cooked at different times.
So even though the corn did not turn out perfect, at least this year the varmints did not pick it before we could. The little corn cobs are now all frozen in the freezer waiting to be enjoyed. I do wonder how the farmers are so successful growing the beautiful corn we see in the grocery store .... More power to them!
I do hope you are enjoying this lovely Summertime. Wishing
you many blessings wherever you may be.
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