DON'T LAUGH!!

Wow! The rebirth (again) of your garden is awe-inspiring! What a miracle!

Wow, Nancy, that is absolutely amazing!! To think that so many of your plants could survive being flooded like that, three times!

I hope y'all are able to get on with your gardening without such interruption. Rain good, flood bad!

It's been a very productive week. I got the corn bed thrown together and put the transplants from Mr. Ed in. I purchased some more seeds and put in a second row. I'm really excited about trying corn! They have their own bed that is all compost. I haven't found a whole lot about Argent, so these may be too close together. We'll find out!



I could not be happier with the spring bed. Well, I could, but I'm so tickled. This shot is actually from the north facing south because the garlic is being a hog. [servimg just went wonky on me. I'll try to post pics another way]



"Front" Row: sugar snap peas (4th attempt), sugar snap peas, broccoli from transplant, broccoli from seed
Row 2: onions, spinach (or just weeds), Grand Rapids lettuce, New Red Fire lettuce
Row 3: onions, bush beans, Salad Bowl lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce
"Last" Row" Little Finger carrots, Nantes carrots, garlic, Tonda di Pargi carrots

I'm so thrilled to have any carrots at all and the lettuce has given us dinner the past 2 nights.

The Moon & Stars watermelons got their own bed. There are only 3 (I tried for 4). Their bed is in the southwest side of the allotment and I hope to let them sprawl. They are getting their first true leaves!



And here is Kid's Bed #1. Check out the happy daisy! I'm so impressed!



There are all 4 kinds of lettuce, sugar snap peas, a broccoli, a Riesentraube tomato, and a watermelon, but at this point, I don't remember which. Oops

The strawberries:



And I have this weird thing popping up in my beds. It almost looks like an upside-down hornets nest. Can anyone identify it? Does anyone else have it? Do I need to do anything with it?



I have a sinus cold and everytime I bent over to talk to the babies or to pull a weed, my nose began running. My head is full, so I'm off to take some good drugs (as soon as I get the kid in bed). With some luck I can sit down and pull the river weeds tomorrow night or maybe this weekend. Some are getting big enough to be a problem. Grrr...

ttfn

The garden with "9 lives"! I am so happy for you!

nancy wrote:And I have this weird thing popping up in my beds. It almost looks like an upside-down hornets nest. Can anyone identify it? Does anyone else have it? Do I need to do anything with it?

I think those are Bird's Nest Fungi. See this: http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljune96.htm
Be sure to read near the end of the article about how they spread their spores -- fascinating!

pattipan

OMG - patti -that's exactly what it is! Thank you SO much!! At least I know now and can control it. It doesn't seem as if it will hurt me. Whew!!

Nancy, feel honored, not everyone can grow a birds' nest fungus! We occasionally find them here in the Northwest, but we're much wetter, usually. Neat little things. Enjoy, then progress on. Might be interesting to know what part of your compost mix encouraged them to sprout. Hmmmmm? Looks like you're doing well with your new beds. Only suggestion I could make is to plant your corn in blocks (rather than rows) to assure adequare pollination of ears. (I have yet to convince hubby to plant in blocks, he refuses to believe the snaggle-tooth set of corn kernels has anything to do with inadequate distribution of pollen.)

The fungus is everywhere. Perhaps I will allow some of it to live - it really is quite cool. And maybe I'll take some over to the woody area that borders the west side of the community garden. It seems that we are due for more severe storms this afternoon, so it should be able to spread itself easily. It does tell me that not everything in my compost is decomposed yet. Boy am I happy to know it's not a nusiance pest, though! I was worried it was some kind of insect home.

I'm hoping the storms hold off until later this evening. I remembered to put my gloves and trowel in the car last night. I have some dahlias for the butterfly bed that I really want to get in the ground. And I really want to pull some weeds now that my nose is no longer running continuously. I really want to plop myself down next to the strawberry bed and weed.

@Nonna - I think it was Miss M. who tried planting corn successively from back to front, so I thought I would try that method. Maybe the next row of squares I will plant all at once - I'm not sure. They will only be 10 days later than the row behind it - should I decrease that to 7? How quickly does corn germinate? Oh, this is so fun!! Thanks for the input!

nancy wrote:@Nonna - I think it was Miss M. who tried planting corn successively from back to front, so I thought I would try that method. Maybe the next row of squares I will plant all at once - I'm not sure. They will only be 10 days later than the row behind it - should I decrease that to 7? How quickly does corn germinate? Oh, this is so fun!! Thanks for the input!

It isn't me... I have only one square of corn planted (4 plants), for experimentation. It is freaking me out, it is so huge ! I have got to plant more of this stuff! I seem to recall it germinated in about a week. And its only pause in vertical growth was when it started putting out tassels and baby corn. It is now scraping the clouds...

It is so incredible seeing your repeatedly traumatized garden roar back to life! Let's hope it doesn't need all nine of those lives Nonna was talking about!

I found it! It was Kim and the post is from January:

"The first week I plant the back row of the 2 back squares (4 plants total which can produce 4-8 ears)
The second week I plant the front row of the 2 back squares.
The third week I plant the back row of the front squares.
The fourth week I plant the front row of the front squares."



Mine might be a bit too close together, but I consider this my learning year for corn. If I get 2 ears I'll be thrilled. I planted the 4th row last night and I put a few pole beans in there, too. I've had 100% germination with the seeds - is that even close to normal?

The Butterfly Bed:



Butterfly weed in the front row. A tropical milkweed seedling and 2 dahlias in the 2nd row. Fennel in row 3 that needs to be trimmed. And a swamp milkweed that is about to bloom in the back row. Since this is mostly a perrenial bed, I'm not in a hurry to fill the squares. I'm still going to put in a purple coneflower and some more tropical milkweed, plus a daisy. Last year's didn't make it.

I apologize for the blurry pics - my camera was set on macro and I wasn't doing closeups. Bummer! Here is the happy lettuce. We continue to get gorgeous salads several times a week.



The biggest of the Moon & Stars:



The stevia and a resident toad:



I finally found pinwheels. They were at JoAnn Fabrics for $9.99. Very, very expensive I thought; however, last week they were 60% off, so I went ahead and bought 4. Hopefully they do their job. I got a red one, yellow, blue, and green. My daughter loves them!



And I thought you might enjoy a picture of last month's butterfly release. All 18 were successfully released and 2-3 have come back and are dining in my backyard daily. Such fun to watch. Here are three of them from May 31 on a giant allium:

I had 100% germination with my corn, but I did plant only 4. We harvested this past Sunday. We got 7 ears, two of which were more like half-ears with spotty pollination. The rest were wonderfully full, and did we have a feast!!!

Thank you for posting that about the back-to-front planting! That's brilliant, and I'll be using that in the future.

LOVE your SFG picture updates Nancy! Beautiful butterflies too! That lettuce is really packed in - yum! Did you just broadcast the seeds, or have they just grown in that thickly? How long are the leaves when you harvest them? Mine are coming along slowly but surely, but I don't want to run the risk of cutting them too soon and not getting multiple harvests - someday.

Oh, and are the pinwheels to deter the birds? If so, does it work?

Nancy I planted some dill just for the black swollowtails and now have just one in the last stage I cant wait to see the adult.

Miss M: I'll keep you posted about how it works. Mine is in a compost-only bed and I have 8 stalks per row (4 per square, but no grids). So far I have the back 2 rows planted. I'm beginning to worry about running out of time, so I don't know if the whole bed will make it. It's worth a try, though!

Shannon - swallowtails are way cool. And it isn't even summer yet, so more should find you!

MG - I bought lettuce transplants from AJ Rahn back in March. I think I got 2 each of 4 varieties. I broke each pack into 4 pieces and put 4 to a square. I don't know if I will be able to find lettuce seedlings in the fall, so I will try seeds then. When I harvest, I just pick leaves randomly from each square. I have not done any cutting yet. Sometimes I get smaller leaves when I'm picking, but I aim for the bigger ones. They don't seem to mind.

The pinwheels are a deer deterrent. Along with the Irish Spring hanging in knee-hi's from the tomato cages. Last year the deer ate my peas and I ended up putting a mesh cage around the whole bed. I wasn't at all happy with it - I felt it kept me out, too. And this year they found the tomatoes - only the Gold Medals. So I'm hoping this works. I really want to fence in my whole allotment, but the whole project just scares overwhelms me. There are several people down there with fences around their plots and they look awesome, but they all had the help of a taller, stronger person (read: man).

I didn't go down there last night - too much going on at home. And I probably won't make it tonite - we actually have Friday night plans (Oakley After Hours). So I'm begging for rain today and I'll make it down there tomorrow. I don't like being away from my babies this long. They are changing and growing so fast!

Well you got your wish!

MG - and then some! That was an awesome storm Friday night!! On Monday we went down to collect tadpoles from Mr. Ed's rainbarrel. He wanted to use the water, but didn't want to kill the tadpoles. It took a while and I bet we brought home more than 100. They are so tiny! Here is a picture I took of the Kid collecting the tadpoles. What I love about this picture is that it gives you a good look at the garden. The allotments closest are Mr. Ed's. He has tomatoes and corn in the beds you can see. Our allotment is at the end of the row on the right. This is facing east.



Oh how I wish I was there right now!