So, we have had rain. Rain means mud. It also means that not much gardening was done this weekend.
Forgive the unsteady hand of my daughter Nell, but as you can see the jeans are no longer presentable in any public setting.
A total of 2 hours, with a half hour around noon, and another 90 minutes this evening, were all we could get in between deluges. Only real upside to it was some rest for me, and that the weeds were really easy to pull, though far too wet to take either a lawn mower to (which is how the garden was set up this year between rows, yet to materialize as a useful benefit) or a weed wacker. So, at the edges of each row, and a bit off of the sides, we weeded by hand.
At least the rows are easy to find. Pictured above are long storage onions. The prolific green is the area between the rows is what was meant to be mowed but has not been possible with all of the rain and schedules.
Had to replant a few rows completely. Great Northern White beans had absolutely crappy germination. 2 to be exact, for 50 feet of row. Planted half of it in Golden Beans and the other half in Rutabaga, which I had meant to do as a new tilled row (and could have been in weeks ago but had not gotten to it) but since I cannot run a tiller through mud, this had to do.
What was planted two weeks ago is up, with largest corn plants being about 6 inches high already. We might dry out for 5 or 6 days coming up, but more rain is expected tonight and tomorrow. We will see how that works out.
Somehow, 3 tomato plants I put out at the Ness Farm, being F2 crosses of Czech Bush and Summertime Gold Rugose evaporated. Will replace those as I have more. Had crappy germination on squashes, so I replanted hills from proven seed I still had from the previous year. Still plenty of time on those as it is 3 weeks until summer, and all of them mature in 90 days or less. Heck, my replanting of squashes eaten by grasshoppers last year was in the beginning of July and they made it to maturity. This is a month earlier than that so not worried. But just hanging out on the weekend watching the sky cry in the little time I have available to work on this stuff is frustrating.
We have had 7 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. Has been one of the wettest springs on record here. No indication of it changing any time soon.
Even here at home, the dirt splatter from the rain is evident on everything, coating plants to a height of a 4-5 inches off of the ground.
So, as I said, we have had rain. Lots of rain. Any vestiges of the drought which had some effect on our state in the last few years are gone. Lake Minnetonka is as high as it has ever been, and the excessive ground water has led to a sewer flooding issue in the neighboring city of Mound, leading to their needing to run sewers into connecting parts of the lake. That means kids will have to wait for a few weeks for the zebra mussels and other natural processes to clean up the water before swimming. Oh well. It is what it is. Put enough people in a small enough area that you need infrastructure in place to keep them from swimming in their own crap, and eventually something will happen leading to that infrastructure breaking down in one way or another.
Things are growing. Fast. We need some dry time with sun and low humidity to dry things out a bit. If patterns hold, this is going to go on for another month, and then it will heat up and dry off. Maybe too much. We will see.
3200 unanswered messages on the blog. Sorry all. Have not had the time or energy to go through them, answer questions, etc. Some day I will get to it. For the moment I am leaving it alone. If you know me well enough, give me a call or an email if you have a question for me.
