Eggplant, field corn, strawberry

 

two varieties of field corn from last year's cobs

I planted two short rows of this for the pole beans to climb up on.  I have one more cob I have not shucked that is a rose orange color.  Eventually, we might have chickens or other animals that will appreciate having this as winter and spring food. We will be planting much more of this in the far garden and this fall the ears should be overflowing!  Mark has told me to go look up the theories behind a corn crib - if I intend to save much more than we did this year.

CORN

Well, I actually had about seven more cobs of different colors - and, including the two bags shown above, ended up with six bags of distinctly different characteristics.  The rose orange/butterscotch cob is one, and then another cob with more pink tones, the red above, the yellow/blue, a ruby red that was VERY hard to strip, and another bag of everything that was EASY to strip which is varied in color and shape. The kicker? I planted two field corns and a sweet corn last year. Corn is one of those that hybridizes easily within the same year the seed is made - so the differences from the parents can be seen immediately. We ate the sweet corn, which had a few kernels of colored corn in it. Some of the 'field' ears were not saveable for dry corn at all because of the sweet corn genetics. Sweet corn kernels do not have the starch to dry hard - they dry soft and then will rot.  Anything with spotty or very uneven kernels was thrown to the dogs.  In the end - what was stripped into these six bags were the 'winners' of the genetic lottery - dried well, even kernels, had great kernels and color, and now they are ready to go another generation.

 

Pink flowering strawberries 

I had not seen pink flowering strawberries in a long time, so I asked Mark to buy three of these at the greenhouse today.  I hope they will produce some fruit, as well.

Japanese eggplant 

I also put several more Blue Shackamaxon beans in the ground by the field corn - they will be the only bean in the garden that has purple beans this year.

Esme has been invited to an Easter egg hunt tomorrow.  There will be other gardening things to do, as I have the weekend off, but it should be nice if she has a good time!  She was so 'big' sounding today - asking me to put beans in the garden for her to put water on, and to open things for her and to come with her etc etc..  I can't recall any of those exact sentences, but she is getting much more understandable.  At the greenhouse she came and told me that she had been missing Grandma in the flowers and we should go and find her.  When I went back to work Esme called out 'We're going to miss you Mom!  See you later!'  When I left for work this morning she told me 'See you later!'  Moments later she poked her head back out the door and said 'Don't crash the car!'  Oh my!