Lost 240 Corn Plants to Round Up

Compare the "before" picture of the beautiful corn rows...well, here's what it looks like now: a nice big chunk of dead corn right in the middle.

A farm hand for the man who farms next to our garden accidentally sprayed a third of this section of corn with roundup. Thanks. A LOT. Brandon was out in our garden when it happened. He was weeding the radishes and saw the tractor come in at an angle. He saw the guy hit the brakes really fast and suspected that our corn had just been sprayed with roundup. A week later, no doubt remains.

Brandon first estimated that 150 stalks were killed. Then he actually counted. 240. Two hundred and forty!!! At 2 ears of corn per stalk, that's 480 ears of corn or 40 dozen. At 4 ears of corn for a $1.00, that's $120 big ones that we won't make selling corn this year.

Too bad, huh. Part of me is really--and I mean REALLY--ticked about it and the other part of me has accepted that there's nothing to be done about it at this point. We're not going to go demand the farmer pay us for it. We still have two-thirds of the first planting of corn left along with the 2nd and 3rd plantings of corn. Granted, the first planting was the BIG one. But, we'll still have LOTS of corn.

On a happier note, our radishes are doing really well. Brandon and I picked about eight 15 foot rows of radishes tonight. German Giant radishes are way cool! They really got BIG. Cherry Belles did well also, but we were not too impressed with the Champion radishes.

Here's a picture of a potato plant. I never knew potatoes had such neat looking flowers!

Our Garden 2009

Gardening Stories and Updates...



I spent about an hour and a half yesterday weeding the raspberries. I planted about 2 dozen shoots this spring in one long row. Then, I planted rhubarb at the end of the row. Well, I'd given up on the rhubarb because it never did come up. The raspberries were surrounded and covered in weeds in not much time at all. Yesterday, I finally got around to weeding them. I did not know weeds could get so large! I was pulling up pig weeds that were almost as tall as I am!

Despite all the weeds, my faith in the power of nature was restored. Not only were those raspberries still alive and growing under all those weeds, I found the rhubarb! It finally came up.

Also, I was amazed and very pleased to find a volunteer tomato plant growing in between our raspberries and corn. It was hidden by weeds and with the corn and raspberries so close, it wouldn't have room to really grow. So, I dug it up.

I already have 18 tomato plants, so I decided to plant this one in a pot and take it inside. I'm going to try to keep it alive over the winter and have fresh tomatoes in December! I'll let you know how that goes.

I have a very bad sunburn on my right shoulder and a sunburn in the shape of a smile on my lower back. Apparently my shirt rode up as I bent over pulling weeds. Ahh...the joys of being super fair-skinned. I have a number of muscles telling me that I worked them way to hard yesterday. But, after being sick last week, it feels so good to have accomplished something and still have energy.