Planting Corns and Beans

Yesterday morning I made the rest of my soil blocks for May (at least I hope). I made eight 2" ones for melons and seeded two seeds into each block. Now I cross my fingers and hope they come up. I also made the rest of that flat in 1 1/2" blocks. I'll use these for my lettuce successions. They will probably get seeded up mid-late May.

Chitted seed at two days

The main vegetable garden chore for the day was to get my chitted seed into the ground. On Wednesday I started chitting the corn and the bean seeds. I don't really want them to form roots, but I want them to have started the process. More than two days and they will have sprouted and then you have to be very very careful not to break off the fragile roots.

I planted the corn on one foot centers. I did one block of twelve plants in Spring Treat. As you can tell by the name it is an early corn. The second block was Shasta White which is a later corn. I'll have another two blocks of corn that will get planted up towards the end of May.

I will keep my beans organized this year. I will.

Then it was on to the beans in the back of that bed. I ran two rows six inches apart with seeds spaced 6" in each row. These beans are all pole beans and I've talked about them enough this week. The only space left in this bed is for some squash which is currently chitting. I'm growing some C. moschata squash. I don't grow much of the C. pepo (except zucchini) because the squash vine borer takes them all down before they can produce. But the C. moschata squash is pretty resistant. I'm growing Black Futsu and Waltham Butternut. So my first 4'x16' three sisters bed is almost filled up - bed 8.

I also planted the beans in the 4'x8' section with zucchini in front of it (part of bed 5). I started chitting this seed early. I have half the zucchini seed already in. The other half will go in this weekend.

The afternoon was saved for another trip to Weston Nurseries. This trip didn't go as well. Lynn my contact that was pulling the plants was on vacation. Yes they pulled plants, but they weren't necessarily the variety that I ordered. If they didn't have it they just replaced it. I wanted hosta "June" and they replaced it with a little 6" blue hosta. Like that is a reasonable substitution. Lynn alwasy emails me and asks me if a substitution is acceptable. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. They also wanted to give me a different colored anemone. I said no.

Then the order itself was messed up. Last week we thought some plants weren't going to make it in time, so we just pushed the delivery date down to this week and they got added to this invoice. But then they showed up in time, so I got them last week. Those never got taken off the list for this week. The last thing I needed was 15 extra plants. What should have been a quick 10 minute pickup lasted over an hour getting things fixed. And in the end I ordered my anemones from Bluestone. I had to order the grass I wanted from them anyway and just did them both at once.

This weekend will be devoted to planting up what was ordered and finishing putting together our grill. Maybe I'll even get the first set of cucumbers and tomatoes in. Maybe. And maybe just maybe my son will remember to call me this weekend. Maybe. My daughter calls me every Saturday like clockwork so I know I'll get to talk to her. Plus she called me on Thursday this week to complain about the elections. I always know what is going on in her life. I wonder if it is Mother's Day on Sunday in Canada too where she lives?