Sunday, August 9, 2015

Kale, Lettuce, and Weird Corn

Usually I plant Winterbor and Blue Curly Kale to overwinter. This year I was going to plant Red Russian to eat in the fall and curly kale to overwinter and eat in the spring. Well the new packet of curly kale seed wasn't any good. The few that came up were weak. So all I have is Red Russian.

In addition I'm growing a red onion I hadn't before and it was very slow to fall down. In the end I knocked them down when I saw a few had gone down. They should be out of the bed by now so I can plant the whole bed up in kale, but they aren't. It isn't a huge issue as the replacement kale seedlings are still a bit small. I wonder this year if I'll get enough kale to make this planting worth it. Hopefully it will and they will grow well and come October I'll be in kale.

Another issue was my bean plants. Some disease is in them and large spots are appearing on the beans themselves. So I decided to pull them up to make way for lettuce.

In addition I pulled the rest of the onions out of the lettuce bed. They got way too big for the spot. Most of the lettuce bolted in the last hot spell we had, even some of the smaller ones. So any bolting lettuce got pulled too.

But I had sown a nursery row of lettuce not long ago. I transplanted them to the now more empty bed.

I hope they grow fast enough to produce before winter. I'm guessing they won't because of the fall shade, but there is a chance.

I'm picking a lot of corn now. I did find one that was pretty strange. I tied the ouside stalks to a bamboo pole so the wind won't lodge them. One of the strings ended up being wrapped around the ear. I tied them before the ears formed and I had no clue where they would come out. Most of the time the ears grew away from the string so there was no issue. But this one grew under it. You can even see the indentation of the pole in the corn. Though it looks weird, it still tasted wonderful.

And the last news for the week is good. I started picking peaches. They aren't big, but they sure are tasty.

4 comments:

  1. Since I don't really know when to harvest my corn (first year growing it), I think I might pick one soon just to check it out. Amazing that plants just work themselves around whatever barriers they come across.

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  2. I think I need to take a more direct approach when dealing with plants that are not producing or look weak/possibly diseased. I keep them around way too long. I need to do as you do and just yank them out to replant something else.

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  3. Yum...that corn sure does look good, even if it is a bit curvy. I was just cleaning out my fava bed today & I'm hoping to get some snow peas started, but all of the local stores are out of seed & I don't really want to drive all the way to William Dam for one packet - I may just do more shelling peas so that the space won't go to waste.

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  4. I actually pulled out my Romanesco zucchini plant yesterday! It made it easy for me though, it had pretty much stopped producing. I am getting better though at not letting plants linger in the garden too long. Peaches! What a treat. It must be so satisfying to harvest your own.

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