Thom Bri

Visited the gardens today. Picked a few beans and a few ears of corn. Everything soaked wet. 6 1/2 inches of rain this week! That's about 16 cm I think. Quite a lot. Really makes harvesting impossible since I have no good way to dry down the harvest. So I'll just have to leave it there in the field until the weather forecast gives me a few dry days. And it's chilly too. Fall is here.

Weirdly, I remember as a kid considering September to be a hot and dry month, but in later years it is a wet and often cool month. The first week of September I drove from Illinois to Florida and back. It was 90s F all the way down and hit 102 F  (38.9 C) in Tennessee. Then a front came through and it's been cool and very wet since then. So the beans and tomatoes and peppers just stopped, waiting for some more sun. Caught Covid in Florida too, and my wife and daughters and niece all did too!

Picked most of the last of the squash too. A lot of those are rotting too. Killed some hundreds of squash bugs. They like to cluster on the ripe fruits and at the bases of the plants. So I pick a squash, shake the bugs onto the dirt and squash them with my boot.

Pulled two large turnips. I didn't really 'plant' these. I had a packet of seeds and kind of just scattered them around the bases of my squash hills along with the radish seeds, hoping it would help protect the squashes. Did not notice that it helped much. I think next year I have to skip planting squashes and take an off year. But I love turnips. Maybe I should actually try to grow those next year in place of squash?

Other stuff I let grow in the garden. Volunteers I encourage:

Last year I dried some leaves in the sun and made tea. Leaves from a wild tree. It was good, but since I am addicted to caffeine I went back to my usual black tea.

Heat one spot instead of the whole house.

I spend most of my time in one room, reading or at the computer. A single electric seat warmer goes a long way. Plus good socks, cap, sweater etc.

About half of the harvest so far. The other half is hanging in the basement with a fan and dehumidifier.
Pretty happy with this year's harvest.
Relatively few rejects, moldy corn. Only a few ears have smut, a lot less than other recent years. That's due mainly to weather. Smut increases with dry weather, and mold with hot, humid, wet weather.

Lots of rain last week and this week. I am worried that the unharvested corn will have a lot of spoiled, moldy ears. That's why I like to harvest early even when the seeds are still a bit soft. But I went on vacation and missed my chance!
Pic shows aggressive beans that have completely overwhelmed a hill of corn and dragged down the plant. I kept the beans back while the corn was growing by pinching off the bean tendrils climbing the corn. But once pollination was done I let the beans go wild. I expect to get decent ears off the corn even if it is covered with bean vines at this stage:

May Lotito wrote:OkI got 12 ears out of 12 plants of heirloom corn seeds from Judith in Arkansas Ozarks, 5/6 mountain morado from the 3rd planting. Zero from 9 giant Inca: 4 of them snapped in the storms and 4 tasseled without ear, one had normal ear but died later in drought and heat. The corn kernels are a little over 4 lbs.

The Arkansas heirloom seeds out perform the other two that are originally from very different climates, one with very short growing season and the other requires very long season. Yet I feel I can improve my soil mineral content to get all the varieties to grow better and healthier. The bloody butcher can go from 8-row to 12-row, for example. Despite low to no yield, Mountain Morado and Inca Giant provide valuable information about soil nutrition so I will still trial them next year.

I think your Mountain Morado are the 4 ears in the upper right. If so, they look the same as the ones I got. I was pretty disappointed in that variety and will not be planting it back next year. I'll post a pic of some of the Inca corn that did a little better, Maiz Morado.

Looking back at your garden pics I suspect the corn would yield more if there was less competition right next to the corn plants. Other than beans I don't let anything else grow right next to the corn, within a foot or so of the base of the plant. I am not obsessive about weeding between the rows but I do keep the hills clear at least until the corn is pollinating, and I remove taller, aggressive plants near the corn. I use a lot of mulch on the corn hills. A lot of the mulch is actually the weeds pulled from between the rows so I am harvesting nutrients and putting them where they will aid the corn. The weeds grow back quickly so this happens over and over during the growing season.

Pic shows Maiz Morado. I picked it pretty green and there are several more still green in the garden. I will probably plant one or two hills of this just for the variety, but not more. I was unhappy that it appears to be partly sweet corn, making me wonder if the seed company is maintaining enough distance between their growing plots.

Anne Miller wrote:

Roy Sullivan wrote:@thom - yup - that's the one: glucose.

@anne - my MIL is not diabetic- she was just wanting to lose weight and wanted to understand what different foods did to her body.

How is your journey going?

If she is losing weight and adds sour dough and still losing weight then it is okay.  Just depend on the other carbs that she adds.

My journey was a long time ago.  I felt really bad, sluggish? Went to doctor and all test were good but I still felt bad.  I did not need to lose weight.  Just felt bad.

Found a book by Dr Adkins at used book store and that changed my life.  I no longer felt bad.  I had energy!

Dr Atkins recommends doing zero carbs then adding carbs back slowly.

I feel counting carbs is better than wearing a monster  Blood sugar may not have anything to do with carbs.  I don't know ....

Very similar story here! I loved low/no carb and did it for years. I am married to a person who hates the very idea of low carb. Since she is the one who cooks, I now eat carbs.

Recently decided to lose some weight. Have lost about 20 pounds in 2 years, and 10 pounds this year since spring. I basically have cut out meals. I have gone from 4 meals a day to 3. My weight stopped declining so a week ago I went to 2 meals a day and have lost a couple of pounds.

Ac Baker wrote:I adore your maize!  I'm thinking you must know a lot about maize, beans & gourd growing by now .. May I ask a question about gourd family, specifically pumpkins & courgette/zucchini, however?

We seem to have had zero fruiting flowers on our pumpkins & courgettes this year.  Could this be due to the hot, dry weather? Or are there other causes which we should consider?

Many thanks!

I am not an expert on gourds. Severe dry weather can kill flowers.
Have you watered?
Have you grown those varieties successfully in the past in that location?

I use corn and oat flour.
The corn I grow my self. I 'grind' it in a standard kitchen blender.
The oat flour I also make in the blender. The source is commercial oat meal.
We mostly fry, not bake.