Permaculture corn? Why not!

I am more and more interested in Permaculture. With the perennials I have established, I can harvest with my cane in one hand and grocery bags in the other. Corn is not generally grown using Permaculture, as it is an annual. Still I see no reason why it cannot be grown as part of a Permaculture guild! (A guild is a variety of plants that support each other's growth and health).

 

An exciting development at my place has occurred: my husband and son want to raise and sell sweet corn! And, none of us are very physical. So, I thought long and hard about how corn could be raised in a Permaculture fashion. And, I came up with some very interesting ideas.

The first thing to do is to scatter fertilizer and then till the ground, let it rest a week so any weed seeds can germinate then till it again as shallowly as possible. Grass is a formidable weed here in Kansas: the pioneers who said grass grew "as high as a horses withers " was not kidding! I hope that tilling twice will do a good job at killing the grass.

Then, clover seeds can be scattered and lightly raked in, as any bare spots will not stay bare for long. Hopefully by seeding it with a short, vigorous plant like clover I can prevent the growth of anything nasty! The clover will be allowed to live: its job is to cover the soil and shade out any weed seeds that grow. After the sweet corn has been harvested the clover will be treated as the rest of the lawn is: it will be left alone excepting for regular mowing.

After the clover seed has been raked in, the corn can be planted by hand. I also have some squash seeds and such to start: as the corn comes up any gaps can receive a squash seedling or some other seedling. Squash has grown under corn for centuries: we will see if the newer varieties do as well! 

The main crop will be corn because early corn sells very well. Honestly, the other plants will be more of a test-the-market crop than anything else. I also intend to add onions if I can get the bed of onions the house uses large enough to sell when the corn is ready. I have always known my onions were underfertilized but I do not mind small onions when I cook. The onions all get chopped up anyways. Customers, however, tend to like onions that are fat and attractive.

We will not be weeding: we will be watering. Mineral oil can be applied to the ears of corn when they silk to prevent worms.

After the harvest I can use the riding lawn mower to mow everything down and let the clover take over. The clover and mowed over corn stalks will act as a fertilizer for next year: clover is a legume and it should fix some nitrogen.

 

I hope that I do not have to till again the next year: if the clover is strong enough then I should not have to!

I chose Permaculture partly because it is cool and I want to see if this works. The other reason is that nobody in my home is particularly healthy: DH and I have our middle-aged type problems and my son has never been that strong *AND* he does not like gardening! While I expect him to do the lion's share of the tilling I know him too well to think he will weed for hours on a hot day. The kid was a micro-preemie and, well, he runs but not very fast: he lifts weights but not as heavy as a person who has never been sick: he gets out of breath more quickly than any other kid his age, and so forth. If he is doing something he likes then he will put his back to what he is doing but he does not like to weed.

I believe that running a tiller will be dramatic enough so that he will work hard: weeding with a hoe can be dull. I know him too well to believe he will pull many weeds. He is OK with a chain saw and I think he will be OK with a tiller but with a hoe? PFFFT! On the good side the kid likes drama as much as any other young man in his late teens, and he would rather use a chain saw than a hoe! And neither DH or I are fit enough to keep the corn weeded. So, for weed control we will need to use Permaculture.

We will be selling at the Farmer's Market, and splitting the money. My son will do most of the tilling and his share of the watering and other work, and my husband and I will cover the expenses and some of the watering and harvesting. Paying for everything is made easy for my husband and I because we already own the tiller and we have a fair amount of leftover fertilizer in the garage. The seeds are not cheap but because I paid for them I also chose them, and I have firm ideas about which varieties are best! I did not want the newest on the market (I wanted something proven), but I also wanted some of the NEWISH short-season hybrids to get in the early corn.

By the time the summer heat gets bad I hope to have gotten all of the corn sold: we will not work the market garden all summer. By the time the corn is ready I hope to just need to pick and sell, and then the stalks can be mown down and we can have the rest of the summer off. 

I hear that the Congress has an approval rating of 5%!

They deserve it, too.

Seventeen years ago the government also shut down, and after the initial surprise it was business as usual for most of the citizens. If this goes not much longer we will all adapt and not think about it much, but in the short term a few people have been cut off from their needed medical care, some folks have no paycheck, and many folks are worried that the Congress will be stupid enough to default.  I do NOT think that they are that foolish, excepting for a niggling little suspicion every now and then. OK, I AM worried, even though I try not to!

Mostly I think that the Congress is playing "chicken" with the country. For them it is a game and a gamble, and the stakes they are playing with are too darned high!

The garden is still producing, for now. I plan to cover the Fall greens with a sheet of plastic, as we have been too busy to plant and cover the greenhouse. So, instead of having an unheated greenhouse to play around in, I will be folding back plastic to harvest. I think it is worth it: this month we got the garage cleaned out and the bathroom vanity in, and I have the paint and supplies to freshen up the bathroom walls. There was not enough time to do everything, an for right now not having a greenhouse to play in is a small sacrifice.

I might feel differently next spring, LOL!

Least said, soonest mended: my beloved daughter has moved out.

I would LIKE to say that she came home and said "Mom, I got an apartment", but it did not go down that way. Instead, a few months ago, she stopped taking her psych meds and she lied about it. She is pretty good at keeping things together for a few months, meds or no, but she cannot manage it forever.

She also started bad-mouthing us to anybody that would listen: of course we did not know about it!

So, she ended up in the hospital just over a week ago, and they put her back on psych meds. When she was discharged she went to stay with friends, who opened their door to her because, according to her, we are horrible people and we treat her horribly.

Now, I would blame her mood disorder, excepting that she is now stable and she has not taken anything she said back. Instead, at age 20, she has moved out and is staying with friends.

She *IS* 20, and I would not mind at all excepting for *HOW* she moved out.

I am going to be taking pills instead of shots.

The shots for multiple sclerosis are just not good enough any longer, so we will be trying other meds. They are PILLS! Yay!

But, things are not at ALL well here. My daughter is again in the hospital, which is not surprising as as near as I can figure she went off of her psych meds 4? months ago. She has been lying to me about it all this time.

She is blaming us for her problems and she has decided that she is not coming home when she is discharged: she has the social workers helping to get her into a place. She is saying horrible things to the staff about us-I think- and they are being terribly PROFFESIONAL and cold when I visit my daughter.

She is 20. If she wanted to leave then why didn't she just move out when she got her job?

I met my daughter's fiance's father yesterday!

It actually went VERY well: I really like him!

We were all nervous, of course, and so when the Fiancé and his Father went home at around 10 that night, my daughter acted out. First she scolded her brother for leaving the cupboard open,(how dare he, LOL!) and then went off to lodge a variety of complaints with her Father. My daughter, when she is anxious, really LIKES to complain about things, and since she was also meeting her intended FIL for the first time she had every RIGHT to be nervous! So she complained about this and that for almost an hour!

Sigh. Between the squabbling and meeting the gent for the first time I did NOT sleep well at ALL last night!!!!!!! It was midnight when I finally settled down, and then I had to get up at 5 because of all of the diet cokes that I had drunk while we were all getting acquainted!

This morning I picked 2 nice cucumbers and a tomato and a fistful of okra. The green beans need picking and so I will do it tomorrow, and I ate a fistful of blackberries. One of the two cabbages that survived our late spring blizzard has a head that is cracking and it really needs to be picked and eaten, and I see that the raccoons have already eaten THREE icebox watermelons and they were barely PINK inside! This is ominous: I might not get my fair share of watermelons this year!

My daughter picks fights when she is under stress: I wind down outside!

An Update.

It has been about 7 months since I posted last.

The garden is actually doing reasonably well, when you take into account the many late frosts and the chemotherapy. I am putting some carpet scraps to excellent use, as I can smother out any grass that grew through the weed barrier. Of course, it does look tacky! The brown against the black weed barrier does not look BAD exactly, but it does not look good either. I also used the carpet scraps to protect the seedlings with fair results: I did have to replant several times! Our last average frost date is about April 7th, and we got 2 major blizzards in May!

I do have one row that I hand weed: I have some very good bush beans in that row, and 4 tomato plants. I am well content. We have picked and eaten perhaps 2 gallons of green beans.

I fell behind on spraying for cabbage worms, and my lovely kale has been shredded! So I have sprayed again, and the new leaves should be good. I use an organic insecticide soap, and it actually does pretty well when I use it!

The chickens are laying well. I hope that my elderly banty gets broody, as I would dearly love to have chicks.

By for now.

Terri

I have not been posting on my blog. I am sorry.

I have not been well. Not sick: not really, just not WELL

The brain fog has been really bad for the last few months. Among other things, that means that I feel stupid and not creative at ALL !

I have changed doctors, and the new neurologist ordered tests, which has been done. My NEXT appointment is not until March! So I have a ways to go. From out discussion at out last appointment, I excpect new meds.

I expect to pop into other folks blogs from time to time, but I think that I will not post here, or if I do I will not post much. I simply lack the mental energy.

I hope to come back in march, after new meds, with enthusiasm for my new garden

Terri

The Wahl's MS diet did not work well for me.

Oh, I did get SOME benefit, but it appeared to be mostly from the Kale. I have no idea why the kale should help me but it does!

Well, it was worth it because now I know to eat kale every day.

A lot of people have reported wonderfull results in reducing their MS, and I wish them well! People report leaving their wheelchairs and canes behind! But, I think it is time for me to set the Wahl's diet aside and do more on-line research for new things to try.

What *HAS* helped my MS is kale, L-carnitine, and capsules of turmeric and cumin. (cumin is the spice that makes like chili taste like chili, and you can get either spice in any grocery store). I get the empty capsules on-line.

So, DRAT!

On the GREAT side, my daughter has gotten a job at Ace hardware! She starts on Monday!

It's Fall!

It is cold and rainy here! It was 70 when I got up and I went to the hardware store without a sweater: I *DO* know better this time of year! I half froze when I got out of the pickup! It was 45 degrees out when I got back with the pear tree that I got on sale: It cost just $15! I will have one of the kids plant it this weekend. The ground should be nice and soft after the rain.

I always go over my budget during the fall sales: This week I also got some half-priced daffodil bulbs. I got 250 bulbs for perhaps $20, and who can resist a deal like that??????? Most of them are yellow but about 1/5 of them are white. I have a weakness for that color scheme! Which is good because most of what was left was yellow. That is fine: as I have said I am very fond of the color scheme! I am VERY pleased!

The dog is sleeping next to me on the sofa on my sweater: he has spent most of the last 3 days outside but it is too cold and wet for him today! He does hate the rain!

Food is really expensive!

As a middle aged woman, I have ways to reduce my food bill. Not everybody can, and I think about paying full price and I shudder!

Every Tuesday bananas at my favorite store are on sale, and since I decided to shop today I bought a fair amount! And, because I have apples from my own tree I decided to make fruit salad tonight and so I bought a bag of little oranges: 3 pounds for $4! And, the peels were thick which means that the oranges were really quite SMALL!

The dish was affordable because I had the apples from the tree and the bananas were on sale: it would have been terribly expensive otherwise!

Speaking of apples, while I only put the best-looking apples in the fridge there is no guarentee that there will not be worms. in them: not every worm hole shows! Home raised apples are best sliced before eating! Of course that is no problem if making fruit salad as the apples are sliced anyways! But, that was not a problem today as the three apples that I cut up used showed no sign of having anything in them excepting good, healthy apple.

An apple still warm from the sun tastes far better than supermarket apples! Though, if you look at the BOTTOM of the supermarket apples they will soon reveal which are fresh and which are not! If the tendrils at the bottom, where the core is, are still green then the apple is VERY fresh! It will be juicy and aromatic! If, however, the tendrils are brown then it will be just another dull supermarket apple, possibly soft and mealy, and in my opinion better for cooking than for eating fresh!!!!!!!

I still have better than 5 pounds of apples from my tree: the fridge will keep them good for months but they will be eaten before too long. Last year I did not have apples on the trees because of a late frost, and so I bought a LOT! of apples from the supermarket at 88 cents  pound. I was lucky: some of those apples had totally green tendrils at the bottom of the core so I knew they had just been picked! I bought those, and they lasted us well into February. They were soft, of course, by then instead of crackling and juicy. They were still excellent for cooking, though! If properly stored apples will last for a very long time..

The summer heat has broken, and I am BUSY-BUSY-BUSY!

I am pretty much doing what I can outside, before the winter weather hits!

The new grass is up, and it might not ned watering any onger! I will watch the weather.

DS and I planted 8 peonys in the back yard, and we laid a strip of weed barrier down so that nobody has to keep it weeded. I planted a Barzilla (Yellow), Henry Sass (white), Shawnee Chief (red), Gay Paree ((2-toned pink), Katharine (white), and a pink and a white from a local nursery:I forget those names!

And, in the front yard we planted 2 small peonies called "Merry Sunshine" next to the mail box.

Also, DD burned the dead limbs this week, so now the yard will soon be tidy. She left a couple of charcol logs, which I will get to shortly.

AND, I saw a neater way to fasten weed barrier down with: the local nursery is using heavy metal stakes with washers! So today I bought 25 spikes with washers: soon the wood that I weigh te weed barrier down with will be back on the weed pile!

And, tomorrow we plan on putting the skin on the greenhouse.

BUSY-BUSY-BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!

To live like you were dying.

No, I am *NOT* dying, but now might be the only time for the fun that DH and I had always planned on doing. We had a pretty good time, just the two of us,  before we adopted the kids and we always figured on having fun when they had moved out also.

So, I tagged along when DH was sent to a conferance in California. We ate out in restaurants, and when the conferance was over we went to Disneyland and then we drove up the coast. A hotel with a view of Morro rock, Clam chowder on a deck overlooking the beach...... it was fun! DH says he does not want to go back to work!

Meanwhile, the kids were dealing with life without Mom to help. The cat got bit and so DD took him in to the vets and they treated him, DD then got sick, and so forth. Since they are 18 and 19 this might have been  a good dry run for adulthood.

Speaking of adulthood, DD is working fewer hours for me, is only taking one college class, and has not turned in a job application in weeks that I know of. Now that we are back from the trip, I have given her *DIRE WARNINGS* of charging her $35 a week room and board if she does not get a job. She is 19: she does not get to kick back! She has a car to save up for, an apartment to pick out, and an adult life to live. She does not get to act like a kid!

And, lastly, I am having an MS day. Every now and then the MS flares up and BITES be, and it is doing so today! I had been meaning to give gluten-free, milk- free, and egg-free a try: perhaps today is when I should do it. Half of the anti-inflamatory diet is eating more greens and the other hald is cutting out the above foods: I have done the adding foods part-seaweed and all- perhaps now would be the time to stop eating the foods that I am not supposed to be eating.

No-work onions: how they turned out.

I had mixed results with the onions, but I noticed something. Last Fall I missed a couple of tiny onions, and this spring they grew early and gave me nice fat onions. But, the onion sets that I planted this spring stayed small and hot. So, I think that I have only gotten little onions because I have been planting them too late in the year.

This is a problem because in my area onion sets are not available until March, and that is apparently just too late.

So, this fall, instead of harvesting my little onions to put in a stew or a stir-fry I will leave them alone and harvest them next year. Hopefully they will be nice and big and mild!!!!!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the onions are being grown in perlite in a shallow raised bed. There is weed barrier below the onions. They were origionally grown with strawberries but it was so hot that I could not keep everything watered: the onions responded by bulbing up but the strawberries they were planted with did die.

The Water Company Wants Hundreds of Dollars to Just Give an Estimate!!!!!!

Not for the house, of course! We HAVE water for the house! I was wanting an estimate for the 5 acres of land that we own outside of town. It was SUPPOSED to be my farm, but I got sick before we could do anything with it. But, I have never had the heart to sell it: it is not that easy to sell a dream! Alter it, maybe......

I am thinking of growing perrenials. I have a few established right now, but for a really cool set-up I need to be able to water. Back before I got sick I had intended to use the creek, but the darnned thing is 25  feet below where I intend to plant! There was a time when I would have bought a foot pump and used it to fill a holding tank, but, now I lack the strength. So, City water is probably what we need. DH would like city water anyways, as he looks on the land as an investment instead of as a farm, and the water would make the land worth more. So, perhaps half of the cost from the household account, and the other half from me?

At any rate, I explained to the lady at the Water Company that I was not intending to have water put in any time soon: I was just looking for a savings account to aim for before I asked for an estimate. She said she just COULDN'T give even a rough estimate over the phone, but when I asked if my savings account should be closer to $1,000 or $10,000, she allowed that often $6,000 would be safer than $1,000. You have to really love helpfull phone operators: she both avoided giving an estimate while simultaneously giving me an idea of what the cost was going to be! She did me a favor, and I am well aware of it!

Over the last few years I have managed to save up $2000. Some of it was from having my blood drawn at an MS research place, some of it was from selling a few articles, and some of it was from any unspent pocket money: the kids got allowances and I eventually figured out that I should also! So, I set aside anything I did not spend on sodas and such when I was in town.

I would not spend that money this year regardless, because I do  not know which way the economy is going to bounce. Right now that money is only for emergencies: I can pay the mortgage and feed us for 2 months of time with  that money, and, regardless of what Washington intends to do I intend to feed us! But, hopefully, in 2-3 years time things will have settled down enough for me to turn that land into a hobby farm. That is actually what that money was always intended to do when I started the account: I was going use it to turn that land into a berry and honey farm! Well, if my DH can hold his job in these troubling times, perhaps it can be turned into something beautifull instead. At any rate I would never spend it while the economy is so uncertain, but I am hoping to know what the economy will be doing in a couple of years.

In the mean time, I can get serious about saving for water. If I can put $50 per month into savings for 2.5 years then I should have added about $1300 to that account. DH is willing to spend some household money on getting water in it as it will make the value of the land appreciate.

I have been doing on-line surveys and playing computer games at Swagbucks during the time that I have to sit down and rest, and I am clearing about $28 dollars a month from that. And, if I put half of my pocket money into the kitty as well instead of spending it on sodas and such....... I can DO! it!

And, if I try and fail, then the account will have more money in it, and money is always usefull!

I think that I would like a line of daffodils along side of the road: I can get those in before the irrigation goes in as they do not need watering. Behind that, safely outside of the right-of-way for the road, I would like a row of peonys. I lADMIRE peonys, and they come in all sorts of colors! They would have to wait until the irrigation water was in, though. They are not as tough as daffodils are.

Behind that I am not sure: I have NEVER had an eye for form and color! I would like more bulbs, including some lilys, some field corn for my chickens, and I would like to expand the existing asparagus patch near the creek. To the east of this would be my fruit trees, which would be grown in a rough-looking thicket. That area of land is too steep for me to mow and I refuse to try! However, I can pop in a few more trees.

That will pretty much fill in the open land between the road and the creek.

There is a good deal of land on the far side of the creek, but I rarely go there now as I only have a foot bridge of a few pressure-treated planks. It has gotten hard for me to walk on that bridge, and it needs to be ajusted a couple of times a year as high water shifts it. The planks cannot be washed away because I drilled holes in the boards, ran a chain through them, and chained them to two trees but high water does shift it some. And, the bank is steep on the other side. To be totally safe from high water the bridge would have to be 30 feet long and I cannot DO that, so, I make do with planks that stay ALMOST always dry! I did use that bridge for maybe 3 years but it is getting harder for me, now.

It is lovely to have a goal again!

Today my daughter leaves with her boyfriend to go on vacation in Arkansas for the weekend.

She told me a few months ago that she was glad that I was OK with her sleeping with her boyfriend. She said that it meant a lot to her. I replied calmly "Oh, I am not, but you are an adult and you will make your own decisions". Not being blind I had already guessed that they were "together", if you know what I mean!

Her boyfriend is a fine young man. I could tell when she was 16 which way the wind was blowing, but we just reminded her that she was not allowed to date adults. He is somewhat older than she is. They both accepted that they could not date at that time. It might have helped that they did not live in the same city: they met at an anime' convention and mostly talked on the phone and on-line.

 Then she turned 18 and they started dating, because then they were both adults.

She is now 19, and if they are still an item next year I suspect that they will get married. I am just guessing, of course, but then again I am not blind. She is not ready to get married yet: she only got her first real job! But, give it a bit. Young women do grow up!

He is a fine young man, and a couple of years ago he warned us that she was having mood swings but covering them up. She was indeed, and we got her medications changed. There is a fair amount of common sense in that young man!

(I do not recall if I had mentioned this, but my daughter is bipolar. A lot of criminals CLAIM to be biplar to get lighter sentences, but they lie. My daughter has never been in trouble with the law: is the real thing. She gets large mood swings, and if they are neglected she CAN hallucinate. So, the LAST things she should be doing is to "tough out" any major mood swings. Because he was an adult he realized this: because she was only 16 she convinced herself that she could tough it out and hid the symptoms from us, but not from her peer group. So, he called us.)

Oh, about my daughters new job! She has been doing a good deal of the housework around here, because she needed the money and I needed the help, and she wangled that into a housekeeping job! It is only part time, but in a recession jobs first-time are hard to get, and she is very excited about it! She will work with a team, and she very much enjoyed her first few days at work!

So, now I am teaching my son the ropes: he is 18 and unemployed. He is, as I write this, carrying the laundry down the stairs to put into the washing machine. After both kids move out, I think that I will need a small washer and dryer upstairs, but for now my son is doing the laundry as part of his housekeeping job. And, DD is giving me 2 hours of work a week to cover her room and board.

I have told them both that adults work for their livings, and they both have accepted this. So, they both pitch in a couple of hours a week because they are adults, and they work more (at $5 an hour) for their pocket money.

When DD applied for the housekeeping job, she said that she was working for 12 hours a week at $5 an hour as a housekeeper for her handicapped Mother, which was accurate enough! When the lady asked if her getting a different job would put her Mother in a bind, she replied "No, now my brother is being taught how". Yes, young women *DO* grow up!

Well, enough for now! This is not a very homesteady (letter? writing? article?), but, I have not had time to homestead this week. Last night I picked 3 tomatos and another small melon: that has been about it for homesteading this week!

Hime Kansen watermelons are doing a wonderfull job

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I am picking 2 of the little watermelons a week, from 6-odd plants, and the raccoons look like they are getting as many! 2 melons are a little more than my family eats at one sitting, so we eat our fill of watermelons once a week, and there are leftovers.

It is over 103 several times a week, I water them twice a week, and the plants just keep making more melons.

I got them from Kitazawa seeds in California. I am just loving this!

Dr. Wahls' MS diet.

I hab been on it for about a week.

Starting on day 2 I felt better, but now I am not. I did some thinking about the differences in diet, and there are a few. For one thing, we are supposed to eat liver weekly and seaweed weekly, and I started out eating that aswell as a can of spinach,  and then I stopped for a week.That is what the diet said to do.

I might need to eat it more often than that. So, today I ate some seaweed,and also a can of spinach. The seaweed is strips of dried nori, which is meant to make sushi with I just tear off a piece, tear it into bits, and swallow it.

The Wahl diet is almost the same as the Caveman diet, with an exception or two. The reason that MS cripples is because the fatty myelin covering over the nerves is destroyed. Dr. Wahls' diet calls for the consumption of a lot of nutrients that are used to build myelin. To build myelin we consume vitamins B1, B9, B12, Omega 3 fatty acids, and Iodine. Much of this we are to get from the food that we eat.  To increase activity across the synapses (and give us more energy) we are to eat more sulfer and B6.

My short-lived improvement is enccouraging: I will tweek my diet some more. She said to eat seaweed and organ meats weekly, and I ate them on day 1 of the diet. I might eat them more often than that: it is possible that they did me a lot of good..

I do not have all of the info nailed down yet, but we are to eat a lot of dark colored vegetables as well as vegetables for the cabbage family. So, I make a large mixing bowl full of, basically, coleslaw and I eat it at every meal. She recommends large amounts of red cabbage, kale (a type of dark green cabbage), carrots, and so forth. With a little vinegar it does taste a lot like cole slaw, though,I need to brush my teeth AFTER breakfast instead of before it because vinegar after sweet toothpaste is not too pleasant!

An update on the handicapped garden!

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As I mentioned last spring, I am somewhat handicapped but I love to garden. I am seeking out an easier way. Here are the results so far:

How the large plants did: Corn, okra, watermelon, broccolli, sunflowers, 3 patches of mustard greens, and peppers.

As I mentioned last spring, I had my son help me roll out woven greenhouse flooring and I punched holes every 3 feet. This was not its intended purpose as I am not using it in a greenhouse, but in my outside garden.
More than one seed was put in each hole. It is working very well: only the pepprs are doing badly and that might be the record breaking heat. It might also be because the peppers are at the edge of the garden: they might be getting watered less.

The okra is doing exceptionally well: there are 4 holes of okra planted, with 1-3 plants in each. We are getting more okra than my family of 4 can eat. The mineature watermelons (Hime Kansen variety, from Kitazawa seeds) have been picked twice, and the plants look healthy enough to set more melons.
Tomatos and potatos.

I have gotten mixed results from the potatos, so I am not sure what to say. I will give an update this fall.

Tomatos are doing very well. Every now and then I take string with me when I care for the chickens, and I tie up a couple of branches. This is AMOST enough:not quite. However, the tomatos are delicious and I am not losing many to rot as very few are toucing the ground. The kids are snacking on the tomatos, and I am also cutting them into the salads. We are pretty much keeping them eaten. HOWEVER, the heat is hurting the pollination of the current crop of flowers: in a few weeks we might be low on tomatos! That is a problem for the future, however.

The small plants that must be weeded did:

As I had said in an earier post, an assortment of small plants were put in a raised bed with weed barrier below, perlite above, and a little fertilizer. Those plants did not come on as quickly as they would have if I had planted them in the dirt, but they are producing. The wind did bring weed seeds and it was hard to get them out wthout injuring the roots of the vegetables. My yield was about 3/4 of what I would have gotten if I had planted them in the ground, but if I had had to plan them into the ground I might not have gotten any harvest as I can no longer dig the roots up! I have harvested quite a few salad greens, and some raw carrots to munch on while I am outside. There are good looking beets in there, but as I do not cook beets very well I am using the greens for salads.

I also have flowers: California poppys are doing wonderfully well and they are still blooming, and I also got anenomes.

Weeds.

3/4 of my garden is weed free. I got a little grass when the wind blew seeds onto the top of the woven greenhouse flooring and the grass got some roots through when it rained, but I pulled the few weeds out when they were small and they have not come back. Unfortunately, where I did not get them when they were small, I now have long grass in about 1/4 of the garden. I am smothering that out, with reasonable success.

That is my vegetable garden so far.

I have planted the garden, watered it, and I have picked: that is all the work I have done. other than pullin a few weeds int he spring that is almost all that I have done, and the garden is doing wonderfully well. The rest of the work was just little things like tying up the tomatos as they grow. I had to weed a little as the grass seed was blown onto the top of the woven greenhouse flooring, but I did not get all of it and so I am smothering out some long grass with scraps of carpet, which does work. On the whole I am pleased with my no work garden. It has not really turned out to be NO work, but since I have not particularly had to weed it sure seems like it!

The Drought in he Midwest is Getting worse

We have not had rain for weeks,  and todays rain showers only added up to less than a inch. The plants might have gotten enoug moisture okeep them alive for the next 4-odd days, but then it will be gone and there is no more rain in theforcast.

The corn field around me ate starting to show yellow leaves. If we do not get rain soon, the corn in this part of Kansas may well be lost.

The winter wheat has already been harvested and it looked excellent, but if everybody looses their corn crop then the price of livestock feed will be very high!

The kids and I were SORT of able to keep my vegetable garden watered, even though it has hit 107 repeatdly It is yielding pretty well. I am getting more okra from my 6 plants then I got a few years ago from one and a half rows of okra! Okra LOVES! the heat!

It is cooler now, with highs in the 90's, so last night I went out at sunset, settled down onto the ground, and picked tomatos. It was lovely!

Pergo flooring does not belong in the kitchen!

Mine looks wonderfull, of course! Alas, my daughter spilled a little flour, which sifted between the cracks.

I immediately hit it with the vacuum, which, after some time, got up the little white line that was so very obvious....

I am lucky: my kids are teens. If I had a novice cook, thee WOULD be considerable spills and I would not be able to keep it looking nice!

And, it DOES look nice! But, flour shows up so terribly, and you cannot run a kitchen without flour!