Kansas City up date

Bob,
Just think of this corn as food for the hungry, a hungry racoon family that is.
It seems we have a family of racoons living in the attic of the house next door. A couple of weeks ago the wife and I were sitting on the back deck with our cofffee enjoying the morning and our garden, when there was a trilling noise.
"Whats that " the wife ask.
I recognised the noise but had to search the old memory back to younger days in the country to remember it.
"It's a coon"

I got up and walked around the house and sure enough there on the other side of the house , trying his best to be invisible against the foundation wall was a baby raccoon. I looked up and there 2 stories up was a hole in the soffet just big enough for him to fall out of and setting in the gutter was mama coon looking down.

I left him alone and went back into my yard back to my coffee.
I got the rest of the story from my neighbor.
Mama coon got her baby on the front porch up on one of the brick pillars and left baby there for most of the day. then about dark she came down and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, She then started climbing the down spouts up 2 stories with her baby. It wasn't easy the house has 2 foot soffets that she had to climb out and around. The first attempt she dropped her baby and went down and started all over again. But she got the youngun up to the nest and as far as I know he is doing fine.
As I said before I've seen mama coon eyeing the corn and no doubt she has been filling the younguns heads with tales of a blue corn feast.

Notice how nice and healthy the corn out in the sun is doing. Below is the one I planted in my yard and it is half as tall.

Thanks Bob here's how your babies were doing in may 2009 in Dallas,Oregon

First Ear

Dill & Butterflys

Corn redo was getting crowded

My corn redo was getting crowded so I opened up the top of my rabbit excluding enclosure to give it room to grow. I also thinned out some of the plants. I left the thinned plants for the rabbits to enjoy.

We have had an unusally hot and dry month. No rain in a month and temps up to 104 F. No global warming here Rush!

Carol

I stumbled across this on the intertubes:

On one occasion, I asked a Hopi woman at Munqapi if she selected only the biggest corn kernels of all one color for planting her blue maize. She snapped back at me, “It is not a good habit to be too picky... we have been given this corn -- small seeds, fat seeds, misshapen seeds -- all of them. It would show that we are not thankful for what we have received if we plant just certain ones and not others” (Nabham 1983 pp. 7)

Nabhan, G. "Kokopelli: the humpbacked flute player" Coevolution Quarterly, pp 4-11, Sp 1983.

Study in pineapple, blue corn, and zinnia.

Possum Turds

A few months back I was going down into the greenhouse, and I caught a glimpse of something moving behind my fish tank. I never saw exactly what it was , but since then I've had clues.
So Saturday night I was doing the same thing before turning out the lights, and I saw him, ..... a possum slowly crawling behind the tank. The next morning he had left me a little gift on the top of the crude device I use to get oxygen into the water.



Big Garden on the Summer Solstice.

Colorado Bob's Blue Corn Experiment-From the Beginning

These are the first pictures that were taken of the Blue Corn. Earth Day, April 22, I was staying in an apartment in Amarillo while in school, but wanted to plant something. I found the blue corn kernels that Colorado Bob gave me and put them into egg cartons with potting soil. Within a week, I had 16 seedlings, even though I swear I only planted 15 kernels. I transplanted the kernels into larger trays. I wasn't coming home to Lubbock until the end of May, so I let the seedlings grow in the trays.
Darin tilled up a plot in the backyard of our Lubbock home and I transplanted the seedlings again this time into the ground. We have had several thunderstorms with hail and I haven't taken time to cultivate the soil, but there are still about 10 plants. They really love the rain. Now at June 20, the Eve of the summer solstice, they are starting a growth spurt that will surely produce. Until then, long live blue corn!

The corn, she grows......plenty of seeds for next year.....

Blue corn redo is still kicking

I replanted my corn and built my rabbit excluding enclosure. So far, so good, even though something tried to dig under it. It certainly couldn't have been a rabbit. I will soon have to open the top to let the corn come out. I just fertilized it for the first time. I need to get the weeds out by I'm excluded also.

I need to know if I should thin every other plant out? Any suggestions?

Carol

Hello Mexican Red

My first Mexican Red sunflower. This one is in the green house, I'm going to try and save the seeds.

Our friend , Hilton Lamar McLaurin has been painting in the garden ......
"Peggy Chapman Garden #2" The Garden at the Tornado Gallery continues to provide a great place for plein air painting. This 5x7 is from last night, very quick, stems blowing in the wind. Great live music before the storm.



Hilton Lamar McLaurin's Photos - Wall Photos on Facebook

Swallowtail, Praying Mantis and Ladybug

The Big Garden - A Hard Row to Hoe

Big Wind

2 nights ago we had a pretty good storm , I got 5/8 of an inch of rain at the greenhouse. But we had most of that rain come in 20 min. With hail and wind. Downtown on the home plot of the experiment, the wind snapped off one of my sunflowers. It laid my mothers garden over pretty good. The corn here is Ok, I think. But it was a bad night, hard on all the plants. On a lighter note, I have baby tomatoes doing fine in the aftermath.

The burgandy sunflower made it,

the one we'll never see didn't.

Black Hollyhock Seeds

I've had my eye on this little patch of Black Hollyhocks at a local bank, got some seeds yesterday.

Our Second Art Market

update from Kansas City

There is Bobby checking out the Hopi blue corn. Bobby was my mother in laws cat. We inherited the cat after Audra died. Guess why she is called Bobby

I've also planted some zennias, sunflowers, hollyhocks, spiderflowers and a tomato to keep the corn company. Can't be having any lonesome corn.

What a difference a little sun makes. Here are the 2 surviving plants that I planted in my yard.

The tallest is only about a foot tall. Compare that to the hill planted next door in the full sun that are close to 3 feet tall.

I talked to the real estate lady about the house next door and explained the significance of the blue corn. I, also, pointed out that it would be extreme bad luck to cut the corn down.

A couple of night ago a coon (that's raccoon for you city folks) was sitting on the back porch roof of the house next door. It looked like he was eyeing the corn, dreaming of roasting ears.

Jack

Well, I'll just be damned........corn is a'coming......5 tassels and 3 silkies so far. I know....that's not a picture of corn growing.........still, not a bad pitcher, eh? Corn pictures on the way.

Compost and Rabbit Pills

The Hollyhock Forest :

Another Sunflower coming on :


This land where the garden is, was a stack yard for the Greer Iron Works for well over 40 years.
The first season last year, we just brought in bags of rabbit manure, and some bone meal. This spring I repeated that, but I also got a cu. yd. of 50/50 compost . Half made from cow manure, half from cotton burrs ( The tough hull around a boll of cotton. )
I'm pretty sure the compost is making this growth in these sunflowers. The Hollyhocks as well.

Report from the Guerneville/Forestville, Ca Outpost

We started with 15 seeds/13 sprouted and managed to make it to be transplanted...but since then 3 have fallen victim to some critters.

Ours look kind of pathetic next to other peoples' corn plants but we are still hoping for knee high by the fourth of July.

Real Blue Corn

My friend Fish, one of the best graphic artists working in America sent me this :



Not sure who made this one, but I've always been a sucker for " nose art " .

Mexican Red Sunflowers

I saw these seeds at Lowes and jumped on them . I started some in peat pots, and planted 5 downtown in my mother's garden. I put this one in a 5 gallon bucket, and left it in the greenhouse. Gonna try and catch the seeds. Sunflowers are like basils , you have know idea just how many there are until, you decide to start growing them.

Corn Tassels

First tassels :



First sun flower :

It's business time!

Young tassel looking for silk...

My corn is tasseling.....3 foots high.......i took some picturas, but am nort so sure about my ability to get them from my expensive camera onto the intro-nert.........but i will try, yes.....I will try.

Ms Wino Blonde.......your pictures with Picacho in the background take me back to a happy time.....we were in Cruces playing the Desert Sun and my baby was shy of 1 yr old and her mother would paddle around in the pool with her as our dog, Pouponne d'Fleur, would run up and down the edge of the pool and bark, bark, bark.......... we'd just come from Ruidoso where it rained for the two weeks we were there......once in cruces we'd go down to the Rio........ and we stayed in this great Paradise Motel.......and ate muchissima southwest food from the Princess Drive-in across from the taco bell........

Still keeping us safe...

GWB watches over the Hopi Blue Corn in my yard. The real pleasure will be watching him fade!

Photo of giant lily plant. 15 blooms on one stalk!

Rain

It rained here today , slow and steady the best there is. I caught 1/2 inch at the greenhouse.
It was timely , our big garden will really stand-up now. A week from today it will be magnificent. If it doesn't hail tomorrow.

From Ganeen, Another Share Cropper with Shere

Larry and I went out and tested our “natural home remedies” to see what appears to work and we will go out and check our test areas in the morning.

1) I sprayed with weed killer (full strength Listerine) – on a few weeds on the west outside the garden area to see if it really kills them.
(Listerine is also supposed to be good to keep mosquitoes away from the human gardeners and I know that works, because I use it when I walk around the neighborhood and when I have cookouts)

2) I sprayed some of the spinach and some beans with a mixture of Ivory dish soap and water – I tied white strings where I sprayed but did not spray the whole row, just about 6 feet in.

3) I sprayed some of the beans, tomatoes & okra with the Garlic/Fish emulsion/Mineral Oil mixture – I tied purple strings where I sprayed but did not spray the whole row, just about 6 feet in as with the other stuff.

The garden is looking wonderful. I saw some big squash blossoms this morning. It was still too muddy to walk around much, but I looked it over pretty good and I think it’s doing very well.

Blessings, Ganeen