Boy the celery is really taking off. Never grown this particular variety but so far, so good. We need it to cool off a bit. On the other hand, I’ve experienced a complete crop failure in the corn department. Wonder if it will impact ethanol futures? If you may recall I had planted between 150 and 200 corn seed and was starting to see some germination. Well it never amounted to much so I decided to very carefully remove the soil over the seed to see what was going on underground. Nothing. No seeds. I think I mentioned seeing quail in the garden. I’m now thinking these were corn fed quail. Luckily it’s still early in the season and my local ACE hardware carries bulk seed so I picked up a bi-color variety called peaches and cream. I haven’t seen the quail in a few days so maybe they’ve moved on. To close off on the corn, it literally germinated nearly 100% in 6 days. That’s more like what I’m used to and why I was nervous when that didn’t happen with the first batch.
An update on the tomato top I’d planted after it was cut off by a cutworm. It stayed green for a few days but really looked wilted and almost flat on the ground. I kept it moist and added a couple of palmetto fronds to shelter it from afternoon sun. This morning it was standing straight and looking very much alive so perhaps it’s recovering. And if I gave you an idea that all of the tomatoes for this season had been planted, that’s not exactly right. I have all the main crop tomatoes planted – those are the ones we count on for late spring and early summer. This is when we get most of our spaghetti sauce and all matter of tomato dishes so I really deal with these carefully and select only tried and true (by me) varieties. But I also start some experimental/specialty varieties that may or may not make it. This year I have a seedless tomato, a low acid tomato, and one advertised to be able to handle ultra hot moist climates. We’ll see. Usually these experiments don’t pan out – can’t handle our weather or the nematodes or other local critters but every once in a while we hit a big winner. I have two new pepper varieties and a new egg plant going in soon.
It’s spring break for Tom and we usually head south for a fishing/camping trip. This year we decided to change it up and fish locally, using our house as home base. That gives us much more flexibility when the weather acts up. We fished several different places with close to zero luck – but the weather was just fine. Having said that, I nearly burned to a crisp on day one by forgetting my hat. I coated myself with aloe as soon as we got back and that worked it’s magic – no residual pain or red coloring the next day. One day Tom took his mom to a spring training baseball game. On Friday, Simon came back to Florida for a couple of days and we got to spend a night with him catching up. Right now it looks like he’ll be spending the summer at Coosa River in Alabama but that could change if a full time teaching position opens up in Florida (or Alabama).
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