Saturday morning came to Red Wing hot and wet. The day before they had received 4.25 inches of rain. Saturday was some type of Amazonian climate where it is in the 90s and the humidity level is so high that even at 5 pm the dew had not evaporated off of the plants.
The last couple of times I have been down there, the first impression that I have of the garden is that I am discouraged. Then I get to work finding where the hell the plants are and I don’t feel so bad.The rain has everything growing well, but the weeds were growing faster than anything else. I brought the weed whipper down with plenty of gasoline and made my way into the garden, clearing the main path down the north side, cleaning up around all of the apple and cherry trees I had planted earlier in the year, until I got down to my late planting of corn and beans. Once there I had to take a careful measure of just where the rows of beans were, and then I cut straight through all the way to the north side of the garden.
From a distance there was no evidence of where the beans might be. Once you were close and looking, they stood out in the thinner blades of grass which have overtaken that part of the garden. Corn, which I had hoed and hilled, was easily shading out the grasses. The beans were straining to reach the crushing canopy the grasses were creating, but those wide flat leaves of the beans were in evidence and showed the rows pretty well. All I could do then was carefully work through the rows, widening the spaces between, and try to remove all of the grasses not actually growing between the individual bean plants.
After an hour of this I had to head into the house and find a bandana to tie around my head. I was sweating hard and fast enough that it was difficult to see as it was running through my eyes so quickly. Every hour I stopped and drank 2 quarts of ice water in the cool of my parent’s kitchen. In this way I worked from 8 am until 1 pm, at which point it was too hot to be walking around holding the weed whipper, and hand weeded until 3 pm when I had to stop. The heat index at this point was well over 100 degrees, there was a wedding being held up by the house, and I needed a longer break anyway.
Nell had just been playing in the cool basement of their house all day. Together we had a picnic of sorts in the basement of left over sandwiches the caterer had provided for everyone who had set up for the wedding, but they had been too hot to eat. We played pool and read books together until about 5, and then I went out to put in a few more hours before we had to go.
The Blauchakker peas are nearly done. The heartiest plants are still showing some flowers, but the earliest settings of peas were dried down (as much as they could in that humidity) and I had to get them picked or they would shortly split open and dump their peas on the ground. The pods are as thick as one of my fingers, and my hands are not small. Really, an amazing, beautiful soup pea. Easy to find and pick too with the off-colored pods. Working my way around both sides of the trellis I found about 2 gallons of pods whose skins felt like damp paper. I expect a lot more will start drying down later in the week.
The dwarf tomatoes, which I am growing on landscape fabric, were also dwarfed by weeds just growing up from the edges of the fabric and the individual holes the tomatoes themselves were planted in. Weeding it was not difficult, just took the weed whipper to the edge of the fabric, then hand pulled the weeds from the holes in fabric. The plants are actively flowering and setting tomatoes, though there may be some blossom drop in this heat.
Next to the tomatoes I remembered (and found) the Arikara watermelons I had planted some weeks ago. They were growing straight up inside the heavy grasses and had to be carefully hand weeded. Once that was done they were simply sprawled in an ungainly way across the bare soil. It is going to take a bit for them to turn their leaves towards the sun, but hopefully they do well since I lost my whole planting of larger watermelons out at the Ness farm, and it is too late to plant any more.
The squash hills I paid little attention to, other than to carefully weed whip as close to them as I could without risking cutting off some wandering finger of vine in the grasses. If I had more time I would have hand weeded the hills, but the pie plate sized leaves, once they are developed, shade out most of the weeds on the hills themselves. I did find it interesting that one of the early plantings of Arikara squash has climbed an undisturbed area just adjacent to where I planted them. The weeds (sunchokes and thistle mostly) are well over my head, and the squash vine has simply gone up and over them to go to the southern sunlight, and has a new squash developing near their tops.
By now I was beyond being physically done with the day. I had Nell put away the toys she had been playing with down in the cool basement, we packed up the car, and made our way home, arriving at our own front door at 8 pm. The garden down in Red Wing really does need more work, and if the weather is in any way acceptable this week I should try to get down there again before I take the family up north to play.
