There's a bright golden haze on the meadow
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye
And it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky........
OOOOOOOOOH what a beautiful morning! Oh what a beautiful day.......
Yep. That's our corn. Our corn is about 12 feet tall now. Here are some more pictures of the glorious stalks and the finally growing ears. The people that you see in the photos are 5'3" and 5'10" for reference. Yep, the stalks grew quite a bit!
Corn is funny - if it doesn't think it has enough support, it starts to grow extra roots futher up the stalk to help support itself. Those extra roots look really strange, almost like very skinny fingers. We are really excited to see the tassels at the top form and open up, which means that the bees better get busy pollinating them! The better the bees pollinate the tassels, the more kernels form on the ears.
Thank you, Mr. Bee! So far, there are several ears forming on the corn stalks - we should have plenty to experiment with for corn meal.
Here's a comparison from two weeks ago.
Similar views and you can see how the pumpkins and sweet potatoes are taking off and vying for the land in the second photo. The artichokes can be seen in the first picture and the beans, which are to the right of the corn, are so small. In that first photograph, all our plants are neat and orderly. In the second one, they are gaining the upper hand on us.
What else is going on in the garden? The beans have not only sprouted and started to grow, but they have exploded!!!! We ended up making a trellis for it to support them. And there are lots of baby pods. Within a short two weeks, these plants went from short stubby things to great vines creeping over each other for support, flowering and developing the seed pods.
Yep, Baby Godzilla is still with us as well as his friends, the Three Flamingos. In addition, they have transportation around the garden now and have drag races in the radish patch to while away the time.
The radishes are done for now. We may put some more seeds in when it is a bit cooler. They taste woody when they are grown in hot weather. Ours grew into very interesting shapes. Several look like they had been wearing corsets.
The next finished crop is our peas. Honestly, they didn't do well at all - soil conditions and being rabbit food didn't help them - but we did get a single pod! It had two peas in that pod, which were very tasty!
Besides our lone pea pod and our interestingly shaped radishes, we pulled a number of beets this week. They aren't huge, but will be very tasty when prepared by our volunteer Ruth who helped out that day. We are waiting on a few more to grow before that crop is finished.
Overall, it's been a quiet time of weeding and watering the plants during this hot, humid weather that we are having. The weeds have diminished because the plants are taking over the ground - they are being choked out, which is nice to see.
In our next post, I'll go over some of the pests that we have been dealing with in our garden. In the mean time, enjoy an old song from an old musical....