My Little Corn Harvest

I took down all but one stalk of corn and harvested these:

I was happy with it considering it is my first time harvesting corn. I have learned some things that should help it be even better in the future. I think I waited a little too long to harvest them because they were not as juicy as I think they could have been.

Today, I planted Iceberg Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce and Cabbage in the soil where the corn was. It gets good sun compared to the spots where the other cabbage and lettuce plants are slowly growing. I didn't account for the sun changing positions during the winter when I first planted those and now they are shaded for a good portion of the day by our orange tree.

Speaking of the citrus, the oranges are turning orange and should be ready in a few weeks.

The grass is turning brown too, since we decided not to plant winter seed.

August Planting

Last night I planted:

3 small rows of SWEET CORN,

one hill (6 seeds) of CUCUMBER

& one hill (5 seeds) of ZUCCHINI.

I covered the area with the corn and cuccumber with netting to prevent cat and bird disruptions.Estimated Harvesting Dates:

Sweet Corn: Nov 20

Zucchini: Oct 26

Cucumber: Oct 31

Here is our front lawn today, 2 weeks after grub killer was applied. Looking much better, but still ugly.

A Lot of Hot and a Little Rain

My garden consists of 8 cherry tomato plants, 1 better boy tomato plant that has never produced a tomato and my compost cantaloupe plant that has many pretty yellow flowers, large and small. I have been battling the squash bugs on the cantaloupe plant with shovel and pesticide, but they seem to be winning the fight. I wonder if I will get any melons.

Cherry tomatoes took about a month off in July and didn't produce since it was so hot. Then, we had a few monsoon storms in a row and it gave them deep watering and a bit cooler weather. So, there are about 6-7 tomatoes growing again.

Strawberry plants on the side of the house are having a rough time because of the heat and my inability to water them all day long. I hope they stick it through until nicer weather comes along.

The citrus trees look much healthier these days since I slightly increased watering. I don't think we will have any grapefruits this season since they all dropped at the beginning of their development. The tangerine tree has TONS of fruit and we are very excited about that.

Our front lawn is infested with GRUBS, the early stages of Japanese Beetles. I treated the lawn with grub killer granules on Aug 10th, and I didn't notice improvement until I just looked at the photos I took on the 10th and compared to the grass today. The grass is much more green and the brown spots are much smaller. I hope for more improvement and to control the grub problem better in the future.

This photo was taken the day I applied the grub killer granules, Aug 10th.

Flashback: I ended up pulling out my sad dehydrated-looking corn stalks in mid-July. I peeked in at a cob of corn and the kernels were small and dried out. It was just too hot. I wanted to plant corn a few weeks ago for fall harvest, but I could not find the early variety at either of the nurseries I went to. I will try corn again and hopefully have better luck next time.

I mentioned in my last post that I have two cherry tomato plants that only produced 3 tomatoes between the two of them and that they stayed green for about a month. They finally turned red in July and I picked them. They tasted good and were about 3 times as large as all the others from the other plants. I believe those two plants are from the seeds I planted and the 6 other plants are purchased from Home Depot as young plants.

I've been loving the rain we are getting; it makes our backyard look so alive! I look forward to cooler weather that will be calling me outside to my plants once again.