First Corn

We enjoyed our first corn of the season -- from our very own corn patch -- on Father's Day.  It was so sweet and tender. Since then I've picked well over 150 ears of corn. Oh my! We've eaten some and I managed to process much of it over a couple of days, and there's still a lot more in the garden. I've been looking for good recipes that use corn. I can't wait to try making tamales. I've been saving some of the husks and drying them but they sure look different from the husks in the supermarket. Those are wide, flat and so light in color.  Perhaps I need to press the husks to keep them flat and dry them in the sun to bleach the color out of them.

The rest of the garden is slowly coming along. With temperatures nearing 100 degrees, the plants are struggling a bit. We finally have one tiny squash growing. Scratch that . . . we had one squash growing. It was in the garden last night but some critter apparently feasted on it during the night. 

There are lots of flowers on the cantaloupe and I'm anticipating having lots of it. The pumpkin plants are getting pretty big and sending out tendrils.  The watermelon is not quite as far along.

Amish pie pumpkin

Sadly, squash bugs and stink bugs attached most of my Amish pie pumpkin plants. 

     

Fairytale pumpkin

  Keeping my fingers crossed that the fairy tale pumpkin survives. 

Fairytale pumpkin with corn

And then there were the potato beetles -- that quickly met their demise. 

It's amazing the damage they did in one day.  

With the heat we've had recently, I'm surprised anything has survived in this planter.  

          The previous hydrant was broken when debris went sailing across the yard during a spring storm. After replacing it with this new one, I decided to build a little planter around it that also serves to protect the hydrant as well. It's been an eventful week in the garden. I've chased the dogs and some calves out of  the garden and something ate summer squash but left no real evidence. Next year we'll have a garden around the fence.