#600 & Adopt a Crop : CORN, bitches!

I'm not going to blow a lot of space on this, but I thought you should know that I've subjected you to 600 posts now and that seems like a lot of you putting up with my foul mouth, so...thank you?

Anyway, yay! 600!

Now, back to the real story, which is corn.

Yes, bitches, CORN already!

This is the first year I've grown corn and corn is scary.

Scary like I've never grown it before so it could have disease or pest issues I don't know how to fix or it might have all kind of special needs I don't know how to address or it might be an anti-semite or WHO KNOWS. See. It's scary.

Or, should I say was scary.

Well, if you're my neighbor, corn still IS scary, but he's a funny dude who saw that movie too many times or perhaps had a traumatizing childhood experience near a cornfield so I can't account for all that, but to me - corn is no longer scary.

See. If I were scared of corn could I get this close to it? Alright, then.

Because the corn is HERE! In the sense that it is actually ripe and we're going to eat it for dinner tonight. And then hopefully for a lot of other nights because WHOA there's a good deal of it out there.

When it rustles, my neighbor squeals like a woman. It's amusing. Because he's not a woman.

And if I seem extra excitable about the whole situation it's because I'm trying to not be mad at Bubba for cracking off the first ear last night away from my prying eyes. And after we were so full from our gazpacho that we couldn't possibly eat the freshly cracked corn (Oh. Is that where that saying comes from? Because I DO care. Is anyone getting this?) in his hot fist even though that's how one must enjoy corn - freshly and immediately picked - so that it doesn't turn all starchy and wrong waiting for your teeth to chomp down on it.

Whoopsy.

But that's OK. I forgive the Bubba. He must have the corn fever, too. He's been helping me palpate the ears and estimate their readiness, so I have to assume that the excitement consumed him and he was unable to restrain his man hand from cuh-racking that ear right off.

I should have made us eat it right there, shouldn't I?

Too late now. We're having it tonight for dinner, with another ear which will be freshly cracked by moi, and we'll do a side by side taste test to see what's better: freshly cracked or yesterday cracked.

And now I will not say cracked or corn any more in this post.

But tomatoes. We can say, tomatoes. So let's!

If you've peeked at the tracker (which I'm actually being really good about updating, dontchaknow) you know that I've already taken down 12 lbs of tomatoes from those plants and we're nearly $80 in the black for the garden this season.

Sweetness. Yes, yes.

What you wouldn't know from looking at the tracker is that the garden shows no signs of said harvesting.

Oh no. It looks like no one has attended to its ripening bounty in a good long time since everything is producing and ripening and fruiting and basically making itself known in the vegetable sense.

Helloooooooo? Anyone home? We're ready to come inside now.

I have never grown tomatoes quite this large, my friends. And when I say, large, I don't mean just the plants are large. No. I mean the tomatoes themselves are XXL. Like, if we were on the islands, we'd be looking for that hula shop with the 4XL sign in the window so that we could properly dress these fuckers for a night out on the town.

There's just more of me to love, baby.

Not that we take our tomatoes out on evening excursions, but you get what I'm saying. Amongst the normal sized tomatoes - in the 1/2 lb category and such, we've had a disproportionate number of biggies. And I've picked more 1 lb+ monsters so far this season than I have in all of my combined gardening seasons and, of that, I'm proud.

Scared. But proud.

And let's not forget that the plants are mighty large themselves. To the point where they're trying to tear down their heavy duty cage in order to...well, I don't know what. Run for freedom? Escape to the circus? Mingle with the apple tree?

Who knows?


To keep them from running off, Bubba helped me reinforce their cages with twine and rebar and we've both given the apple tree a stern lecture about provoking the tomatoes.

YOU KNOW HOW THEY ARE, APPLE TREE - Don't taunt. It's rude.

You may also be frightened to know that the beans have gotten a second wind and are putting out another crop for me. Because they heard we were getting more beans in the farmshare this week and that my freezer is still full from the last 4 lbs I took off the plants which I believed to be my final bean harvest and clearly was not.

You know you want it.

Um, darn?

Also, if you were sad that we weren't going to be featuring the bulbous lovable lemon cucumbers around here anymore because we'd reached the finish line with this year's Adopt a Crop - dry your tears. The cucumbers have not yet halted production.



No. I picked about a half pound last night for our gazpacho and, in so doing, still left a sizable crop on the plants for, um, later. Yeah. We might have to make more pickles.

Other things are growing, too, although not as quickly or astoundingly as other things. These not astounding things of which I speak are the citrus.

I'd be astounding if I were a kumquat.

The lemon tree is doing, I'd say, average, and putting some energy into filling out the fruit that has set and stayed after it dropped a million little dried up good-for-nothings on my patio.


The new kumquat is doing, I'll say, slightly below average, given that it's dropped most of the tiny fruit that it initially set and is rounding out the few last little fruits with minimal daily progress. This may have been the result of a recent and poorly managed heat wave.

Thankfully the plant looks glorious and shiny despite its sudden lack of teensy fruits, so I'll give it a pass just this once. But no more free rides after this, kumquat - you hear me?

And that about does it for the update here. And I guess I can stop calling it Adopt a Crop since we've gone full circle on that madness already. Y'all can start thinking about what your winter crop might should be. And I'll start thinking about whether I have it in me to pull together a winter garden. Think about things like potatoes, garlic, onions and fava beans.

Just think about them! That's all!