Last Pickings
Enough pictures of tiny, lonely fruit! Aside from spinach and beets, the rest of my plantings were not very bountiful. I hastily planted squash and corn in rather hard soil, and I believe they were nutrient starved. I have since improved soil conditions, and have a real bumper crop coming soon! Meanwhile, here are some interesting pixs of miscellaneous growings.
Green squash flowers are a bit smaller but otherwise are identical to pumpkin flowers. Likewise every morning they would open up to the cool air and close by the time the sunlight directly hit them. My squash, as you can see in the picture, tended to be small and the skins were tough. Fairly disappointing like my corn. I also grew some cantelope, and none of them were as big or as sweet as what is sold in the store. All the above took a lot of water and did not fair well in the hot sun. They also were all vine plants and work better on a small, backyard lot if grown along a wire fence or similar support frame. I will not grow these seeds again.
Upcoming: back to basics! More on soil and irrigation. I am still catching up on this journal, and pictures are taken daily. My garden right now is growing like crazy with green veggies, and this time I prepped the soil properly. But there are always bottlenecks as I can see this second harvest coming and the need for getting ready for a third. Another bummer crop: snow peas. Grow better in wet, coastal climates where weather is cooler. But the peas tasted great, and were nice snacks for bunnies and while I worked in the garden.
Did You Know?
Every morning I let my bunnies out of their cages. I keep them in cages over night to protect them from racoons. I then usually do some morning garden work, and lately I’ve been thinning my plantings. As I pluck seedlings from the earth, I like to give these scraps to the bunnies. They make good treats. Anyhow, I notice early morning the bunnies have a routine. First, they bounce around, chasing one another. This lasts about 20 minutes or so before they tire. Then they kind of sniff around looking for food. After they get a little in the bellies, they then begin to preen one another. Here are some pictures of my bunnies (I have three) grooming one another.
I really didn’t realize bunnies were so social. I considered them a little smarter than lizards. But bunnies definately have emotions and affectionate ties. Though these bunnies run from me and are not too friendly (only curious), they do enjoy being outside their cages and being in proximity, playing, and being companions between themselves. I consider grooming very much a clear social quality. I really had a low view of bunnies, but now I give them much more credit. Bunnies are very peaceful animals, and they have no predatory instinct. They are simply curious animals who like to snack, sleep, and play.
Tomatoes Spectacular!
I don’t think anyone in California has a bad experience with tomatoes! Though I was tempted to grow from seed, I purchased 20 seedlings in May. May is a month when the hardware and nurseries drum up a fever pitch of tomato plant sales. I bought a number of types, ranging from beef steak (my favorite) to cherry tomatoes. Tomatoes will grow in almost any soil. But they are high nitorgen consumers, so will deplete the soil. As soil is depleted, the fruit grows smaller and smaller. However, they will keep producing all summer long, and my plants have been churning out tomatoes daily for over three months. I expect them to faithfully produce for another month, into October. My only warning, large tomatoes will tend to bend vines down to the ground. If tomatoes touch earth, watch out for slugs and other critters. Make sure your prize tomatoes are off the ground. I placed a number on top of styrofoam cups just to keep slugs away. Slugs will fiesta once the fruit turns from green to red. So ‘watch out’.
Tomatoes are a great staple crop. They like daily watering otherwise the leaves begin to curl, and if water the vines will grow and grow. They did best along my livestock-wire fence. As vines get heavy with fruit, they can break, so be sure they plant as necessary support. I would also plant your tomato seedlings about three feet apart. Beef steak plants get very large, so maybe four to five feet there. I recently installed a drip irrigation system, placing outlets at the foot of each tomato plant. This has made watering pure ‘cake’. Will share some pixs on my water system soon! Will do the tomatoes again next year once the soil is replenished with bunny droppings, etc. .
Corn on the Cobb
Unfortunately my garden produced really anemic corn. I had two problems, and these can be kept in mind when growing corn yourself. First, I have hard clay soil, and did not prepare it properly. Rather than digging up an entire radius of ground, I dug out a small hole and planted the corn seed. Any serious planting needs proper preparation of soil which means full tilling plus (re)fertilization. Second, corn is fertilized by wind not pollen. In order to optimize corn kernals you need to plant lots of rows with corn fairly close to one another.
bunny wants butter with corn
What I planted was mostly for aesthetic value. Each corn stalk produced two to three ears. But the ears, once peeled back, had scattered kernals indicating uneven fertilization. Between my few (14) stalks, I had one good ear of corn. Corn ears varied in size from very small to medium, and my guess this is lack of proper nutrition. My stalks also tended to be stunted, and this is due to a plant which becomes more or less pot-bound in hard clay soil. In the end the ears made good snacks for my bunnies. Corn along with sunflowers are very pleasing to the eye. I will grow more, but next time they will be in tighter rows 🙂
Beets, beets, and more beets
I have a ton of garden pixs I have yet to post on this site. Hopefully I can catch up over the next two weeks. But I wanted to share some picutres of my first beat harvest. Like the spinach, I first planted these in containers and then transfered to the garden. This was very labor intensive, and since then I’ve planted a second beat crop, and learning from mistakes, I wisely broadcasted my seed. This skips a very labor intensive step, saving much time with fine results. I would only recommend germinating seed in containers if prize or expensive flowers and something much more delicate than beats or spinach. As it is both spinach and beats are closely related seed, and they are very easy to grow with high nutrition. As always replenish your soil. Dark Greens suck up lots of nitrogen, and my soil restoerer, naturally, is table scrap, lawn clippings, and bunny mix! Go bunnies!
Meanwhile, the beats were great. I prefer them to spinach, but you get five times the spinach seed per package unlike beat. Beats have the benefit of a tasty root along with succilent leaves and steams. They are like ‘bonus’ spinach plants, tasting the same. They only problem with this batch was I did not know the prime picking time. I alloweed them to grow in their beds for too long. And while they fallowed, an aphid population began to boom.
This didn’t ruin too much. Aphids like to suck the juices of the plant from underneath the leaf, so they are not readily apparent. It’s a slow death, and you can wash them off. The key to deter aphid population growth is to pick early, limiting their food supply. After cropping both spinach and beats, I realize as soon as teh leaves turn a dark green, it’s time to pick! Don’t wait because the plants don’t get bigger and greener. If they fallow too long they will begin to seed and turn yellow, the tips of the leaves curling and drying up. When aphids attack, the leaves also will curly up as in the left-hand pix.
God Bless!
Bunny Trails 