It's been some time since I updated this blog, so I think it's about time for me to do so.

Well, the corn did not come from outer space as I thought, it is a fungus called smut. I learned this thanks to the wonderful people at the University of Maryland. They are really great about helping you out with gardening questions. It did not seem to infect the other ears of corn, but I think that's because the worms ate the fungus before it could develop. I certainly hope we don't plant corn again next year. You can buy it so cheaply, it isn't worth the effort.

Mary took our first watermelon, but, like the cantaloupes, she said it was tasteless. She said the second one was mine. I think I'll wait until next week when my brother, Kenny, comes up to pick it. That is if the midnight raiders don't beat me to it.

The peppers finally seem to be growing and the walls of the peppers we've gotten from them are thicker. There appear to be a lot of peppers on the plants, so I'm happy about that.

The zucchini and squash are slowing down and the cantaloupe is done. The eggplants are really spreading out and both the Japanese eggplants and the plain old American eggplants are producing really nice fruit. The tomatoes appear to have slowed down but are still plentiful.

Both Mary and I have enjoyed this garden and look forward to next year's garden when we have a little bit of knowledge under our belts.

I'll update this blog if anything exciting happens, like we get more alien vegetables or a hurricane comes and wipes out the whole field. So check back from time to time. We have to be out of the garden by October 25 so I'll post the closing blog sometime in October.

Killer Korn from Outer Space

Don't know what happened to this ear of corn. It almost appears to be stuffed with Styrofoam when you look at it. But the kernels are firm and black inside. I don't know if it has a fungus that I heard about on TV or if something else is going on here. I sent the above pictures to the U of MD Agricultural School to see what they say about it. Our other ears of corn are immature but do not show signs of having the same problem. I don't know where this alien corn came from and I hope we don't have more of it. Since this is Silver Queen corn, maybe this is the Mean Queen corn from Sleeping Beauty.

Well, I thought I would never say this, but-----We have an overabundance of tomatoes!!!!! I picked about 21 tomatoes today and I had about 10 on my window sill before I got these. I haven't noticed anything missing since I put up the Alarm Pro sign. I just hope I have this many tomatoes next week so I can take some to my family on the Eastern Shore.

Tonight I'm having a soft crab sandwich (Mars had soft crabs for $28 a dozen), tomatoes from the garden and corn I bought from the "Corn Man." A real summertime dinner!!! The Corn Man is a man that has a truck he brings to a point on Sollers Point road near DCC and sells the best corn from the back of his truck. People line up just to buy his corn. If anyone from this area refers to the Corn Man, everyone knows who he is, hence the name Corn Man. He said that this is Silver King corn and that it is sweeter than Silver Queen. And the Corn Man wouldn't lie, would he? We'll see tonight.

Zucchini seem to be slowing down, but part of that could be because I'm cutting back the leaves because they are keeping the light from other plants. I have 4 large ones in the refrigerator right now that I intend to stuff and freeze for later. I've eaten so much squash this summer I feel like it's coming out of my ears. I took some yellow squash to my Bridge group yesterday and I was surprised but they took them all. I was really grateful for that.

The watermelon is coming along and should be ready to be picked sometime within the next week. I'll talk to Mary about when she would like to pick it. I figure she brought the plant, she should get the melon. There is another one that is getting to be a fair size on that vine, but it still has a couple of weeks to go. I don't know what we're going to do about the cantaloupe. Mary tossed a couple that she said had rotted on the vine. I didn't notice any rotting, but I could have overlooked them. The honeydew plant doesn't seem to be doing much. It does have a blossom on it, perhaps it'll start producing later.

The storm we had earlier this week broke a good size limb off our largest eggplant plant but the rest of the plant seems to be doing well. Although, all the eggplants seem to slowed their production, so maybe we won't get too many more from them.

Well, that's all the gardening news for this week. I wonder what the garden will hold for me next week..........................

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves!!!!

Well, we've been hit by the vegetable thieves. There was a beautiful tomato just sitting on the vine. It was about one day before it would have been ripe enough to pick. When I went back the next day it was gone, as were 2 or 3 others. I called Mary when I got home to see if she had picked it and she said no that she was saving it for me. We have been getting reports of thieves in the area. Generally, when they are caught they give whatever they stole to whoever caught them and they explain their actions by saying they thought that these are community gardens. I don't know of any place where people go in and work for hours in the hot sun and then you can go and help yourself. I don't mind helping someone in need, but I don't like people who feel that they are entitled to help themselves. Even the gardens that the city had the foods went to Our Daily Bread for distribution. Average citizens did not help themselves.

I did take one of my Alarm Pro signs from here at the house and post it down there. I don't know if it will do any good or not, but it might give someone a pause for thought. I also want a private property sign that will remove the excuse of "community gardens".

This watermelon was a real surprise. I was just checking to see if we had any watermelons starting. I was amazed to see this large one. I check the garden each time I go there to see what is growing. This picture is not the best in the world. I put my cellphone on top of it to try to give an idea of the size of the melon. It is pretty well hidden by the leaves of the plant so I don't know if the thieves will get it before we do or not. I hope it tastes better then the cantaloupe I got the other day. I wasn't trying to pick it. I was just trying to check the stem end to see if it was any where near ripe when the stem just snapped. It was really aromatic and my car was full of the smell of cantaloupe. I let it set here at home for about 2 days before I cut it. It didn't have much of a taste at all. I just hope that perhaps it was picked too soon.

Our corn is starting to sprout ears. The silk is still yellow but in some places it is starting to brown up. The eggplants are coming in pretty well. The tomatoes are still green. There are plenty of them but they are green. The peppers remain on the small side. They are California Wonders. I just wonder if we got Bell Peppers if they would have been bigger. We are finally getting blooms on the bean plants but no beans yet. However, the bean plants are reaching out and trying to strangle anything close to them.

As an aside, my topsy turvy tomato plant here at home has 9 tomatoes on it and 3 of them are starting to ripen. The lettuce in my wonder box is doing well. I just prefer romaine lettuce or something with more body than the kind that grew from the seed packet I had.

Well that's the update for now. I wonder if the local paper, The Eagle, would be interested in reporting on the thievery going on in the gardens????

More Storm Damage

Since my last post, we've had numerous storms with varying degrees of severity. When I went to the garden Saturday, it looked like the wind had just pushed the zucchini plant on the end over. I tried to straight it up as much as I could but I don't know how it'll make out. Some corn had also blown over and I tied them up as much as I could. I don't think they were severely damaged and they should be OK. The one corn stalk that blew over last week, however, looks like a lost cause.

We continue to have problems with our favorite beetle. They seem to infested the one tomato plant the most. I think this is because the branches are either on or close to the ground. I've tried to lift them as much as I can but the plant has grown in such a way that it extremely hard to get it off the ground. I sent an email to the U of Md and they said that this particular beetle is very difficult to get rid of because of it immunity to so many insecticides. The Sevin seems to help so I will continue to use it.

I got reports of vegetable thieves in the area. I don't know what we can do about it. I'm thinking of taking a spare Alarm Pro sign that I have and putting that in the garden. Hopefully, the thieves will be dumb enough to think I have the garden alarmed. I also want a to get a private property sign since the one thief said that he thought they were community gardens and anyone could just help themselves---a likely story if you ask me.

Mary and I have discussed investing in some row covers, if they're not too expensive, and that might hide the watermelons and cantaloupes. I seriously think if we don't do something that our watermelons will grow legs and we'll never eat a single one of them.

Yesterday, I staked the last of the tomatoes. I also tied up an eggplant and a pepper plant. I worked from about noon to 3PM. I was so tired when I finished, I could hardly move. The fruit on the tomato plant, the pepper plant and the eggplant were on the ground and there are several eggplants that are just about large enough to pick. I felt that I had to finish and I did. Hopefully, I won't have to spend another day like that there.

Mary has had her son and his family visiting from France and a brother-in-law visiting from out of state, so she has been really busy and not able to do much at the garden or anywhere else for that matter. She has been faithful about doing her share of the watering and we'll be working together in the garden again when her company leaves.

The tomatoes are starting to come in. I got 4 or 5 of them on each of my last two trips. The peppers are also starting to come in but they seem to be small in size. The first few peppers I had seemed to have thin walls. I hope the future ones are fleshier. A cantaloupe or two will soon be ripe enough to pick. For the most part, everything is starting to produce and we should be eating more than squash soon.

Since I last posted, I went back to the garden on Saturday and staked the other two tomato plants in that row. The back row of tomato plants are the tallest and the ones most in need of staking. That row is now all staked and I'll get to the others later.

I did bring home 5 yellow squash plants and 2 peppers yesterday. One of the peppers had a bad spot in it and I felt that it should come off the plant. The other pepper is quite small but solid red. The squash and zucchini plants are getting so large that they are blocking the light from the other plants. I thought about cutting them back but I didn't have anything with me to cut them. I discussed this with Mary when I got back home and she suggested that we cut them and I agreed.

Today, I wanted to cut my grass but it was too wet, so I went to the garden instead. I did cut back a lot of the large squash leaves. This allows the eggplants and the peppers to get more light. I laid the leaves in the pathways. I hope this will help keep the weeds down and possibly develop in something like a compost. At least it won't hurt anything.

We had a storm last night and it helped with the trimming back of the yellow squash by blowing over some of the leaves. It also bent one of the stalks of corn. I tied the corn back up straight. I don't know if it will make it or not.

Today, I also, tied up the one cucumber that was being overrun by the cantaloupe. I tried to put the cantaloupe back into the little fenced area that we have for them, but they keep coming through the netting.

I was talking to a couple today. This is their third year at Stansbury. They had some minor storm damage also. One of their tomato plants had blown over and something happened to one of their pepper plants. I saw that they had watermelon growing and the lady, Carol is her name, said that they planted them in the middle of the lot because the other plants would hide them and keep them from being stolen. Ours are right down at the end of the lot, so I guess we'll lose at least some of them.

I brought home 3 zucchinis and 6 yellow squash today. By necessity, I've been making some dishes using the squash. Last week, I made a stuffed zucchini with ground turkey and spaghetti sauce. It was really good. Today, I made a pie with cottage cheese, yellow squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. That was definitely better than I expected. Either tomorrow or Tuesday, I plan on making zucchini bread using a cake mix. I don't make anything that's difficult. I don't know what vitamins are in squash or tomatoes, but I do know I shouldn't be deficient in them.

In the next couple of days, I hope to get a couple of tomatoes from the garden. We've been getting two or three a week. There are plenty of tomatoes there. We just need them to ripen up and then I'll be in my glory.

BAAAAD News and Good News

I'll start with the bad news first. We had storms go through here last night. When I went to the garden today, I was extremely upset. The one tomato plant had blown over cage and all. One of the stems had a severe split. Others were split or bent. This was especially true of the Beefmaster tomatoes. The other tomatoes didn't sustain as much damage. The Beefmasters are tall and heavy plus the wind was enough to throw them around. I went to the hardware store and bought some tomato stakes, twine and an axe. Then I pounded the stakes into the ground and tied up the plants. I wasn't able to pound the stakes as deeply as I would have liked, but I figure I'll drive them deeper into the ground each time I water. I was only able to do this to about 4 of the plants. It was so hot and I had missed lunch by the time I was working on the fourth stake, I had lost all strenght and had to call it a day. I could barely lift the hatch to pound the stake. I'll take care of the other two plants in that row tomorrow when I go to the garden.

All the tomato plants are full of tomatoes and a lot of them are a pretty good size. This makes them heavy and the cages we had are really too short for them. I told Mary the other day that we needed to get them staked up. That's what percrastination get you.

Here's what the tomatoes looked like after I staked them. I've tied them up so much it looks like they were trying to escape. And I think they were. They had spread all over the place

The good news is we now have little eggplants. In fact, we have 3 baby eggplants. Below is one.

And Cantaloupes!!!

The leaves on the cantaloupe plants have grown so much since Tuesday, that I was having a hard time finding them. On Tueday, I counted 7. Today, I could only find 5. I don't think anything is eating them. I just think that I couldn't find them.

Every thing else looks just fine--none the worse for the storm damage. They are calling for scattered storms tonight again. Well, it's summer time. What can you expect? I hope the tomatoes survive.

Cantaloupes, Cantaloupes, Cantaloupes.

The garden continues to grow each day. Today, I got 6 more squash, a zucchini, a tomato and two very small peppers from the garden.


The squash and zucchini are still taking over the whole place, with the cantaloupe coming in a very close second. I was amazed today. I found a small cantaloupe about the size of a ping pong ball. Then as I looked closer, I found another. Then another, until I counted about 7 cantaloupes in various sizes. I don't know what we're going to do with so many cantaloupes. People are afraid when they see me coming now because they think I'm going to give them more squash. I think I might run out of friends before I run out of squash.

The watermelon plant is really spreading out and the corn is maturing. I hope we don't get the watermelon at the same time as we get the cantaloupe. Or as many watermelons. We'll be over our heads in melons. The cauliflower doesn't look so great, but perhaps that will come into it's own in the fall. Two of the three head lettuce plants look pretty good but the third one looks kind of poor. Lots of tomatoes on the vines, but they seem to ripening one at a time. Hopefully, more will ripen soon. Some of the green ones are getting fairly large. That's when they're the best---nice and big and red.

I still keep a close watch on the eggplants. I haven't seen any blossoms on the ground so perhaps the lime I put on them helped. Of course, our old friend, the Colorado Potato Beetle is still around. I took a jar of water and dish detergent down there today and knocked the two I saw into the jar. I know that's what the man next to us does and he had a chewed up plant but it had a large eggplant on it.

Mary had sent me an email telling me I probably wouldn't have much to harvest today. She was really surprised when I told her what I found there. There's a tomato that should be ripe either tomorrow or Thursday, so I told Mary to take it. I hope she does.

I don't go back until Saturday. I wonder what treasures I find then!!!!