Nell came to the office with me on Friday. Only night this week where I was not stuck in the office until some ungodly hour before being able to leave. We drove down to Red Wing, snarfed down a dinner of BBQ pork ribs, red potatoes, sugar snap peas and carrots, and then I headed down to the gardens to work until dark in the cool of the evening.
There was an interesting surprise waiting for me. Last year I grew potatoes at Red Wing, but the gophers got them and I gave up on trying to dig them up because I could not find any. This year there are potatoes volunteering here and there. I planted German Butterball and Yukon Gold, so I am curious to see this fall, assuming the gophers don’t get these, what managed to overwinter in Minnesota. Potatoes are not something that generally is thought capable of naturalizing here.
I started work on hilling the late planting of corn. The early planting will….be what it will be. The extended cold spring overcame much of it with weeds, but some of it is fine. The early plantings of Wamneheza and Mandan White Flint will do what they do and I will have to be happy with it. The late plantings after a second tilling though should be fine.
Nell and I worked until sundown. Tomorrow we would have to finish the long trellises for the Christmas Lima beans and Hidatsa Sheild beans. They were starting to form runners.
The Purple Blauchakker peas are really doing well. The trellises are bowing under the weight of the peas and the plants are still flowering heavily. Good to see. Have not had enough sustained heat to kill them yet thankfully. Should get a lot from the sheer quantity we planted of them.
Nell and I took the garden tractor back the long way around the field to check out the blackberry patch and apple trees along the way. Both are set heavy with immature fruit and it should be a good year for both.
Saturday I awoke at 430 am with Nell kicking me and grinding her teeth. I had fallen asleep giving her a backscratch (like mother like daughter) so I got up, made and drank a pot of coffee, and was out in the field by 530 am.
Over the course of the day, I finished hilling all of the corn, weed whipped between all of the rows of early planted corn, the grapevines, cleared all of the apple trees and bush cherries, and a couple of the rows of beans. It rained the whole time. Few things more miserable than working in 80 degree weather with 100% humidity and rain. But at least I got all the corn hilled. The late plantings are all doing well. We finished trellising all of the beans.
Nell was a bit homesick, and so was I. With how much time I have had at the office, and away at the gardens, I had not seen much of the family, so at 3pm, in the rain, we packed up and headed home……where Patti and I picked a few gallons of strawberries, which I processed down to a gallon of puree, and I weeded the Sasha’s Altai and Siberian tomatoes. Both have set tomatoes now. I still figure July for ripe fruit. Good to see they are coming though.
As far as disappointments for the weekend: I had two total losses to predation. My grow-out of Tug Hill paprika peppers was gone, without evidence that any plants had ever existed. The only thought I have is that it had to be rabbits because there were no footprints and no tunneling underneath. I also lost an entire planting of Shirofume soybeans to moles who undercut all of the plants and pulled them down into their tunnels. I think it is time to go pulp fiction on them. Will work at thinking up something real sadistic.
So that is our Friday and Saturday. It is now 815pm and my body is done. I am drinking a glass of bourbon to stave off muscle spasms for the night and tomorrow I will work early at the Ness gardens, and then kill roosters for a chicken feed at David’s for the evening. At least that is the plan. And we all know what happens to plans.
