Thom Bri

Ahmet, that's beautiful.
Trapping bees is so rewarding. I try every year and usually get none, but this year 3 swarms came in. Hoping for a successful winter.

I wonder, if the seeds are not mature are they doing the birds any good? Is there enough meat there?

By the way, your method sounds a lot like mine. I have bought seeds and planted them, years ago, and now I just sort of ignore them among my other plants. They reseed naturally. This year I made an effort to encourage them and ended up shading out just about everything else in that garden. But it was pretty.

May Lotito wrote:Thom,
Five ears on a single stalk is interesting. Have you checked if they all have kernels? I got one plant with multiple ears, even on a single shank but that was due to failed pollination. The corn kept trying to channel the energy somewhere.
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Yes, all 5 had grains. The ears were all small, similar to Glass Gem, and last few were tiny. But all pollinated.

This corn. It was supposed to be blue, and about half were, but the other half were multi-colored.
https://www.rareseeds.com/corn-mini-blue-popcorn

Re the wood chip question, it depends on whether your soil already has lots of organic matter or not. If it is barren clay or sand, the wood chips will benefit the huegle, mix them with the soil you cover the logs with. Otherwise, don't worry too much about it, use them wherever they seem useful.

Don't be surprised if it seems to take forever, years, for the wood to break down. I am digging up last year's garden beds and the logs and wood I put down last year green are still quite solid. Stuff that is several years old is getting soft. Pine might take years and years.

Perhaps you might have chicken for dinner a night or two. Then he may become more careful with how they roam.
Or if that is too aggressive, just trap them and make them come and get them.

What kind of corn is in those pics?

Christopher Weeks wrote:How do you decide when to pick ears?

Factors include: dry down/maturity, pest pressure, weather forcasts, what else?

My corn stalks and leaves are mostly well on the way to browning, but the ears are still damp and many have fresh silk.

Also, our second frost took out all my squash.

No frost here yet, but it's October, could happen any day. All my squash are long dead anyway.

I pick corn any time after milk stage. Dough stage is fine, so often still some green husks. I like to pick on a dry day preferably if there are several dry days in the forecast.

Picking moist corn if the weather isn't dry is a sure way to get lots of spoilage. Hot, humid and wet is worst.

Picked all the remaining corn today, 2 1/2 hours. Nice sunny dry day, it's lying out in the sunshine.
It will probably take until about Christmas to get it all shelled. Next job now is bundling it all and hanging it to dry.

It's preserving fall/winter/early spring snow and rain that is benefited by top mulch in dry climates. It has time to soak in during cold weather. Summer rains may just cover the surface and be lost to evaporation in the hot sunshine.
Dig under that old brush pile that appears to be doing nothing. I suspect you will find the soil under it has more deep moisture than a bare area nearby.
This year we had a very cool and dry May. My bare earth was bone dry, but mulched areas were still wet.

Very low carb-ketogenic diet helped me a lot. My allergies went away and I slept so much better. I can now breathe through my nose which I never could before.
Main problem for me, I believe, was gluten. I cut that out 30 years ago.