Sunday was a beautiful day for a Mother’s Day. After all the weeks of poor weather, cold, sleet, snow, rain, winds, etc, we had an incredible day that other than a few sprinkles later in the afternoon, was conducive to planting and playing outside.
The soil there was dry enough to work and I did a large section in just Wamneheza Speckled Flour Corn, then went back through and put squash hills in every 8 feet throughout the plot of corn, and a section of hills on the north end of the plot. That took me well into the afternoon as I needed to take the stirrup hoe to the whole thing in order to kill the newly emerging weeds, and then a rake to make it all into raised beds. I Planted solid rows on the east and west side of the plot, and filled in-between with hills spaced 4 feet apart to allow enough sunlight in for the squash to vine adequately without feeling the need to climb the hills of corn themselves, and then planted squash hills between every third hill of corn. These are Arikara Squash which are an old Native American variety from the Dakota area. They were one of the best storage squashes for me last winter, and we are still eating them.
This took me from 10 am to about 3 pm. Rain seemed to be threatening so I decided to not start another large area of corn and instead went back to the first plot of corn I planted two weeks ago and planted a row of squash hills up against the untilled area on the southwest corner, and another set of hills inside the corn planting of Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash which is a white acorn squash which stored fairly well too. Being of two different species, the squashes are not supposed to be able to cross so there should be no issues regarding that.
My nephew Ben used the garden tractor to haul down a bunch of 5 gallon buckets of water and we gave all of the trees that have been planted a good soaking. Buds are emerging on all of them, including the apple trees I dug out of my gardens back at home. Since I had just left them for a week in my driveway with their roots covered with wet leaves I was glad to see they appear to have survived that and the ride down to Red Wing tied to the top of our vehicle. Even all of the bush cherries are budding out, and at about a buck apiece I was thinking there was a good chance that I would lose some. Next time I am down there the irrigation system should be hooked up so I will at least have running water down at the garden.
I uncovered the broccoli I planted there. I should have brought a few more plants. 4 of them had not made it for whatever reason. The rest look fine. The garlic bulbils I had planted around the bed are all coming up now. Curious to see how large the bulbs get growing down there in a spring planting. At the very least I suppose they will give me an individual bulb but the ones I overwintered in my home garden managed to give me full heads of garlic (albeit small ones).
An additional note on the corn: I had originally planned on planting about a half dozen kinds of corn out here, staggering the plantings out from real early in the year out to about June 1st so that they would tassel at disparate enough dates to prevent cross-pollination. Due to how long the cold lasted here, I am far more restricted than I had hoped I would be, so I cannot grow as many varieties as I had hoped. Because of this circumstance, I am doing larger plantings of fewer kinds, and some of the experimentation I had hoped to do will have to wait until a year with a warmer spring. I have a lot to get done in the next couple of weeks.
I was sorry I didn’t have more time. Not being there earlier in the morning though I am not sure would have helped. My body was starting to tell me it had enough punishment for the day so maybe not such a bad thing that there was a light rain that started. I laid down until it was time for dinner, and afterwards the kids put on a “program” for the mothers which the kids had been working on together all day. It was damn cute too. Then it was time to pack up and head home. Woke up to a thunderstorm this morning. Lightning fixes nitrogen to the rain and helps things to grow. So long as we escape hail and flooding I welcome these rains.
