Garden Talk

Even though I talk about my garden a lot on this here blog, I need you to not be fooled by it. Yes, I have a garden - a big one - and I write about it with pride and joy. But the truth is, I hardly have a green thumb. Probably three quarters of what I plant ends up dead before it can yield any produce. Every year I wonder, "Why am I doing this?" It costs us far more in time and money to grow our own vegetables than it would to just buy them from the store. Plus, my mother-in-law, the garden hoarder, is always trying to make us take her vegetables. 

But there's such a sense of accomplishment in gardening, despite my low success rate. And home-grown stuff tastes amazing... for vegetables... 

So I continue to garden even though I'm not great at it.

With my gardening efforts, I have learned that I cannot grow flowers. The only flowers I've ever successfully grown are sunflowers... so basically... weeds. When we first bought our house, I tried every year to plant flowers, and they always died. Every year, I try to grow poppies, and they always get a few centimeters high and then die. Potted plants inside my house always die. And every year I plant marigolds next to my tomatoes... and they die.

But this year is different! This year, for the first time, the marigolds are alive!

And they are flourishing! 

I've never had them expand beyond a single bloom and actually fill in the space. 

Also this year, I've kept some of my Mother's Day flowers alive. They're not in the best shape, but they're alive!

My friend, Melissa, gave me some snapdragons for Mother's Day.

Zoe gave me whatever these are...

And like I said, they are barely alive, but they're alive!

(The mystery plant Eva brought home from kindergarten growing in a Dixie cup didn't survive the transplant to the yard). 

The funniest thing about all this is that I married a farm boy. Scotty's grandpa and his brothers ran a local produce company for over 40 years, so Scotty grew up farming. You would think that would make him a great gardener, but it hasn't given us any gardening advantage. Scotty is just as responsible for plant deaths as I am!

The farm did give us a great resource for fresh peas, tomatoes, green beans, and corn for many years, though, and thus, we are corn snobs. As Scotty's grandpa grew older (and as his brothers began passing away), we knew that the day would come where we would need to learn to grow our own corn. Scotty's grandpa passed away a few years ago, but his brother, Fred, has continued growing corn and sharing it with us in the summer. This year, we decided it's time to give corn a try. 

Since we do square-foot gardening, we are using a far different method than that of the farm. We got some seed from Uncle Fred who said, "give them plenty of space," and we were like, "uhh... we're planting nine per square foot because that's what Mel Bartholemew says to do..." and Uncle Fred said his daughter has been doing that, and somehow it's worked. It's very different than growing corn on a farm, but it makes sense because on a farm, you need space for irrigation and pickers. We don't need that in our backyard. Farming and gardening share some similarities, but ultimately, they are two different systems, which is why marrying a farm boy doesn’t automatically mean you’ll have an amazing garden.

I wanted a little bit of a "head start" on the corn, so I planted our first batch from starts. The rest I have done from Fred’s seed, and I've planted it in phases so it will ripen across time. One of my greatest concerns is making sure the corn pollinates effectively so we actually get ears of corn, so I've spent all summer reading up on corn fertility and watching for the stalks to form tassels and silks. 

When we got back from our vacation last week, I was so excited to see our first corn tassels from the corn starts peeking over our backyard fence. A few days later, the first silks appeared. 

Just this morning, I found our first tassels on our very own corn stalks grown from seed! I now feel a great sense of responsibility in that I must bring about corn fertility. I am, essentially, a corn sex therapist. My therapy techniques for this season will include giving the stalks a gentle shake so pollen drops from the tassels to the silks. Other ideas include breaking off a tassel and touching it to the silks or touching a cotton ball from tassel to silk. I also read online that it's recommended to only water from the ground and never from above the plants because that washes the pollen off before it can do its thing. I'd never thought of this, and I've very often watered my garden with sprinklers or by hand with a sprinkler attachment, so this year, we decided to try only watering from the ground (i.e. NO SPRINKLING) to see if that helps with the rest of our garden. 

So far, it has been super fun to grow corn. It sprouts really fast and grows rapidly, so it's exciting to have a crop that show such visible progress from day to day. Hopefully, by the end of July, we'll have some ears of corn! And if all goes well, the marigolds will still be alive, and the sunflowers will have bloomed!