A Quick Stop At The Ness Farm & A Day At The Minnetonka Garden With Frank & Anonymous

So, a few days ago we took at quick drive out to the Ness Farm to see how the garden was doing there, assuming that most seeds would have emerged with the rain, but that the colder temps would have kept things from growing too much.

The two types of corn are only obvious when looking down the full rows.  It is still hard to pick the individual plants out of the weeds that are growing, and we will need to take a day to do a bit of early weed remediation.  It looks like we have good germination on both the popcorn and the flour corn which I am very happy to see.

The squash were just starting to pop out of the hills.  This is a Baby Vi C. Mochata, and it looks like there is 50% germination so far, which I expect to be close to 100% now if I went out there today (which I didn’t).

All of the beans and cowpeas are up which is good to see.  The carrots, rutabaga, beets, carrots are all up, and the cabbage plants survived the transplanting.

Baby Vi is just so much fun to watch interact with her surroundings out there (and anywhere to be honest) so here are just a few photos of her being, well, herself.

Not only did I cut willow staves for staking tomatoes later I cut each of the kids a walking staff.  Nell was not along for this trip, but we made one for her as well anyway and I showed the kids how to strip the bark off of them, and I used the strips of bark to tie together the bundles we took which today made their way to the Minnetonka garden.

And that was all last Friday.  Yesterday was just a day of me at home while it rained, and the kids and Patti made a trip down to Faribault MN to visit family.  It was good for me to have a down day.  I did two batches of bread, one of them huge buns for burgers when everyone got home, dishes, and laid about watching action movies on DVD because the internet was down, and Patti had the camera with her so I could not have done blog posts anyway.  Internet was actually down well into the evening, but was good to have a break from that too.

Today was a full day at the Minnetonka garden.   Frank was there at 830 am, while I did not make it there until three hours later.  Being dependent on others driving me, and Anonymous being fogged in this morning had me at home, but the fog lifted, he made the drive in to my house, and we took our van because it held far more than his vehicle for the final bit from my house to the Minnetonka garden.  Frank was resting in his truck there, exhausted, sweaty, muddy, and mosquito bitten.  We surveyed the garden, decided that Frank would go home to clean up, we would be work in the garden until Frank returned, and then we would all go out for a late lunch together.  Afterwards Anonymous and I would return and we actually worked until well after 7 pm when my body told me that it was time to go home.

The one modification to our original plan was that after lunch (sandwiches and sodas at PAIRINGS where Frank and I had Cuban pork sandwiches with home made chips and Anonymous had a turkey one) Frank hung out in the garden and talked gardening with Anonymous which was nice, especially since they had not met each other yet.

When I thought of it through the day I took photos as we worked.   We would finish weeding a bed, fork it to loosen the soil, rake it clean of the last of the weeds, space out the plants with cages, plant them, and move on to the next bed.

Sun is getting lower in the western sky in this photo.  The shade provided by trees to the west of the garden was welcome.  Nearly done with what we would accomplish at this point.

Had to take the last photo from the southwestern edge of the garden due to the angle of the sun.  In the end there were 13 beds of plants.  3 of Jimmy Nardellow peppers, for a total of 72 peppers, and ten of tomatoes, which by pure chance held 72 tomato plants.

I planted the middle section of trellis with 12′ of what is now an F3 of Hidatsa Shield/Dragon Tongue beans.  This particular one has a shield, but is different in shape than Hidatsa Shield, though the main color is white.  Have not tried eating any as a fresh bean but I am hoping that the various grow outs are stabilizing.  I plan on doing another of the crosses on one of the sections, and the Old Man Minnetonka dry bean on the other.  I think a half day with the family, and we could get the remaining beds weeded, and the fences cleaned up so that tomatoes and beans can be planted along them.  Maybe more Mandan Red or Black.  We will see.  I am, overall, very happy that we got so much in the ground today, and endlessly grateful to Anonymous for making the trip into The Cities to help us get things in the ground.