The Wind That Shakes The Corn

 We've got our paintbrush out and we've been helping the wind pollinate the corn at our house! Corn plants have both male and female parts on the same plant and the plant sex that creates big juicy cobs of corn is all about the pollen getting from the male parts (the tassels, up top) onto the female parts (the silk, at the tip of each potential ear).  In a big field of corn, the wind does the job admirably. In our little backyard patch with only three rows and a hedge around our property to block wind, not to mention neighbors houses and trees and such, we can't be sure the wind will get the pollen in the right spots.

 So, we're helping out a little. Here is Ru, demonstrating what I've been doing with my biggest watercolor wash brush. I snipped several tassels that were shedding pollen and put them in a ziploc and then dipped my brush into the bottom after giving it a few good shakes. The pale yellow dust collected on the hairs of the brush and then I went around giving each tassel a little brushing.

 Some of our tassels are this pretty color, like some of the female parts got all My Little Pony and wanted to make sure everyone knew their gender by wearing all pink. Kind of makes me chuckle.

 And some of our silks are this pale blond color, almost transparent in the sunshine. I am interested to see how the corn kernels relate to the silk color. (If they do) Every single one of those hairs runs down to a specific kernel of corn and if each strand finds a granule of pollen it will develop a juicy bump on the cob...if not it will be a dry blank spot. Trying to hand pollinate our corn makes the whole process seem ridiculously miraculous. I think it will be astounding if I manage to get any full ears out of the process. How can you ever be sure that every single hair has been given pollen? There are so many of them and the pollen is so tiny. It's amazing to me that it ever works with just the wind to do the job.

 We were the only ones after the pollen. Some bees, not our bees as far as I noticed, but a larger variety that werem't honeybees, were collecting too. Bees actively gather pollen in addition to nectar. Pollen has a lot of protein and fat, basically a meat substitute for a vegetarian species...nectar is mainly sugar, which is a good energy source. The bees turn nectar into honey but they just eat the pollen. Fun to see that our corn is making food for us and others, with no extra effort!

corn, plants, garden, pollen, pollination, sex, ear, cob, kernel, bees, grown, summer, gardening, food, sweet corn

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Summer Coming In

We're into the real stuff now....hot nights when we lie on top of our beds listening to the fan whir away without even untucking the sheets, epic salads for dinner served in our big wooden salad bowl, days that stretch out longer than they have any right to be. Real summer.

Mango lemonade with mint

I have a window-box of fresh herbs on the back porch and its getting a lot of use. I drop snipped bits into our dinner salads, and snip them over all our meats and every glass of whatever we're drinking is better with a sprig of mint, right? I love fresh herb season. Next year I have to remember to make sure cilantro and thyme make it in. (Help me remember that, will you?)

Our corn went from this....

To this!

And here come the tassels...the male parts of the plant!

The corn/lawn experiment, in which I planted corn right in our turf grass and then mulched over the top once there were rows of green leaves..... is going well. I have never grown corn. My parents always did when I was growing up, but I've never done it myself. Fun to have the space and the sun. My dad always planted our corn when I was a kid, it was his special garden project, he pounded in stakes with taut string between to be sure of perfectly straight plantings, and then he put in the corn. I remember that we always planted from little paper bags full of seed that we got at the feed-store. Not a feed-store in sight here and I still seem to be managing to pull of my own tiny corn patch! Hooray!

The apples on our apple tree are swelling and starting to show just the barest hint of a blush...still wondering what color they'll end up, how big they'll be and if they'll taste good enough for eating. A few weeks ago I ate a jar of applesauce my aunt made, thinking wistfully that I hoped this fall we'd be eating our own. And apple pies, and dried apple rings and maybe a few apple turnovers for autumn picnics to boot! The boughs are starting to bend downwards with the weight of the fruit which makes me smile.

And the bees are happy about summer. They're buzzing around pollinating our cucumbers and tomatoes, and zooming over the hedge, to yards beyond our range of vision. I have been into the hive a couple of times since introducing the bees to their new digs. They're building beautiful comb and filling it with all kinds of good things, and I am hopeful that they'll find enough fodder in the neighborhood to make sure they are all lardered up for the winter. I have plans to build a small fence, with climbing, flowering vines planted on it, to enclose the area where the hive is, and create a little protected bee yard. We're working on teaching Dee to stay away from the hive but he did recently discover it and is now on closely monitored probation to ensure that he never get out of eye-sight. Time for a little landscaping to solve the problem. I'm thinking a short fence of some kind with honeysuckle on it, and maybe pots of jasmine in the summer to make it really highly scented. Mmmmm!!!! I'd like a barrier like that around my house, wouldn't you?



Closing with this song which is humming in my mind, on perpetual repeat, Sumer Is Icumen In, sometimes also called The Cuckoo Song. Can't remember where I first heard it but I know it was a long time ago and I know rings in my mind merrily and makes me smile. Its a very old song, one of the oldest written songs we have in English, written about 1260 or so....a little ode to "sumer." It says "Summer is a comin' in, loudly sing cuckoo, groweth seed and bloometh meadow and springs the wood anew..." Summer is a pretty timeless affair.

Garden Fever

Am having a major garden day. Time to make spring happen by sheer force of will. I just ordered my raised beds for our vegetable garden. It will be my very biggest veggie section yet and I'm extremely excited. I bought cedar beds from this company. There will be four beds: 3 feet by 5 feet and then a big pole bean teepee in the center of it all. I am imagining an idyllic little hideout for the kids in the middle of the vegetable garden + the perfect vertical support for Kentucky Wonders.  Here's a little sketch of how it will all fall out. 

I am so excited about growing pole beans this year. I usually grow bush beans (nothing wrong with them) but I just found out that pole beans produce supply and demand, for as long as you continue picking the fruit, whereas bush beans put out one big round of beans and call it good. I have a really pretty looking packet of triple color pole beans....gold, green and purple, all mixed in one seed packet. Can't wait to have that first summer dinner of tender pods with a dollop of melting butter.

I also started seeds for the garden this morning. We've got 11 kinds of tomatoes going (I'm not insane, I promise), eggplant, sweet peppers, lettuces, cucumbers, melons and even a couple artichokes just for kicks.

The only big things I'm waiting on are the arrival of the beds, and the removal of five diseased trees along the back border of our property. We've finally decided on a tree service and bargained for the best price we can so now we just need to get a date booked. Once the trees come down I'll be out marking out the paths, assembling beds and filling them up and maybe, maybe we'll finally be getting some nice warm weather. We sure are having a slow, cool spring. Last year at this time we had dandelions in the grass, and the cherries trees were in full bloom. This year we're just starting forsythia season and I haven't even laid down my crabgrass pre-emergent.

In the meantime, I have been watering my flat of seeds, sorting out the ones I'll direct seed instead, collecting cardboard for the bottom of my beds and buying what supplies I need to make it a gangbuster growing season. I've also taken to making long phone calls to my fellow gardener sister, Foxy and talking through my edible garden issues with her.

So far I have discovered the following brilliant ideas:

• You should hand pollinate your corn for better ear development in the small home garden. (Hah! I know the secret to avoiding those puny, underdeveloped ears!)
• Carrots crave steady moisture so you must water faithfully during the three freaking weeks they take to germinate and it helps to put a board over the seeds to keep moisture in the soil...just lift the board daily to peek for signs of green and when the sprouts show, take it off. (I think I tend to dry mine out so, I can't wait to try this) They also want soft soil to make long straight roots instead of gnarled stunted versions and apparently straight manure in the soil will make their roots split.They also love wood ashes so I know which plots will be getting our fireplace leavings! They are a cool weather crop so you can plant them before the frost free date, which I didn't know.
• Potatoes need cool weather too and it's a good idea to start them indoors if your summer goes above 90 degrees F so that they will have enough time to complete their growth cycle before it gets hot. (and yes, that would be our summers) I'm total ran out of the room to go start the organic Yukon Golds that were sprouting in my pantry when I found that out.
• Making crisp homemade pickles means picking cukes when young, soaking them in an ice bath, canning them within 24hrs off the vine and raw packing them in the jars and pouring in boiling brine to cover. (Aha! I hope to conquer the dill pickle and banish the mush this year. )
• Asian eggplants are more tender and thin skinned and contain fewer fibrous seeds than the Italian variety. Eggplants are my most recent discovery...I love how they melt in the mouth when cooked well.
• You can grow scallions in your garden using the chopped off roots from your grocery store purchase. Is that cool, or what?
• Watermelons will set fruit more readily when multiple plants are present. A single hill can support three plants at a time...they'll twine all over each other. The secret is that they are not self-fertile and you'll have much better pollination odds with several plants. So great to know! I also need to make sure I get some black plastic down around those guys as they love all the heat you can muster. A watermelon is ripe when the two small tendrils closest to the melon turn brown and the underside of the melon is a creamy color.
• There are a lot of options out there for supporting tomatoes that will work work better than the traditional and ever-insufficient tomato cage. See the following: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C. Gonna have to figure something cool out.
• Beets are slow growers, just like carrots. Each beet seed in a packet is actually a cluster of seeds so you need fewer than you think you will when sowing. Beets like to be thinned...they need room to develop that big root.

Related articles

• Garden In Your Supermarket Shopping Basket (survivalfarm.wordpress.com)
• This Year Save Money with Your Edible Garden (mytowncryer.com)
• Methods for Planting Pole Beans (brighthub.com)
• 5 Tips for Starting Seeds Indoors (learnwaystosave.wordpress.com)
• Starting Seeds Indoors (frugalupstate.com)

So Far This Week....

We've had our first local sweet corn. Its been ripe before now but, I just finally got a chance to pick up an armful and haul it home to douse with butter and salt. YUM. It was really, really good. Am contemplating making some corn chowder in the near future. What else do you do with fresh sweet corn besides eat it on the cob in volumes? I'd love to hear your ideas.

We watched Nib coo and gurgle and chortled together over his increasingly charming almost giggle. He is so close people...so close! Argh! He's an incredible little morning bird. Wakes up full of little wet and cheery things to say, all wreathed in smiles. He's a darling dear. No other word. We continue to be amazed at his ability to sleep at night. I am a fervent co-sleeper but, with this baby I really haven't because he wakes up once a night and seems to prefer his own private slumber in a little basket on the floor next to our bed. Quite incredible. I am very astonished at this phenomenon and have never really seen anything like it before although of course you read of such urban legends in books. (I thought they were lies, all lies!) We are having far more trouble at nighttime with his big brother Dee. I guess they don't call it terrible two for nothing.

Also, there was baking. I realize I am supposed to be savoring the chilly last bits of my air conditioned existence before moving into a big house with no cooling mechanism of any kids BUT...I can't go on a very long baking fast. I love to bake. So, I fell prey to a dreamy sounding recipe for pound cake...a classic that I had never made (Can you believe it?). And it was just okay. I'm not wild about pound cake I guess, I'm all give or take about it after the experience and a little reflection. Yes..but LOOK!!!! Isn't that beautiful? That was my very favorite part of the whole event, right there...that beautiful creamy, smooth, angel wing batter. Mmmmmm......stunning, no? 

And we had a date this week! Its been an age. We're budgeting out money and trying to be careful not to spend any more than we have to (house down payment) and one of the things that took a serious cut for a while was our babysitter money. That meant no dates for a while which was kind of hard to swallow but, oh it felt good to go out again. We just paid for the sitter, no dinner, no movie...we went for a walk on the foggy seashore instead which fit my romance bill. Yay New England!