Officially Farming!

We had to wait until about 6:00 last night for the weather to finally cool enough for us to work in the field that we will be growing our corn.  Since we already had one tick issue, Mom made sure to spray us with repellant really good.  (Ticks are nasty bugs that bury their heads in your skin and drink your blood.  They can also spread diseases.)

Since the Kernel had previously tilled much of the land, all we needed to do was loosen up the soil a little bit.  The rain from a few days ago made it very heavy.  But we got the job done by all means humanly, or in our case, childly possible.  LOL

We decided we'll use some of that fabric stuff that reduces weeds but lets water through.  We want to grow corn, not weeds.  Growing weeds means having to spend our summer days pulling weeds rather than having some fun (like the water balloon fight we had earlier in the day). 

So with Pop's help, we measured and measured and came up with a plan.  We will plant 36 (seeds) of each variety.  Each will consist of four rows by nine plants.  And we will space each variety 18 inches apart to allow for walking around them.  This means when we're all done planting all the corn, we will have three columns of corn.  We talked with our Nana, Sweet Ears, last night and she thinks that will be a lot of corn!  We will have to wait and see.

By 9:00 last night we had two varieties officially planted:  Bloody Butcher and the Japanese Hulless Popcorn.  We picked these two to start with because they have shown the most growth so far.  This means we're officially farming since we have them planted in the ground!  

We hope to get more planted later this afternoon.

Stating Our Case: Mixed Results

Today will be blistering hot.  Something close to 100 degrees.  We need to get our corn planted if we have any hopes of tasting the different varieties come fall.  Some of the corn seeds we planted nearly two weeks ago have of yet to show signs of sprouts.  We're not sure why, but we plan on examining them closer come late afternoon when it will be cooler outside.  The others that did sprout are doing well.

We stopped by the Halas nursery the other day and bought a ton of Marigolds.  OK, so maybe not a ton, but we did buy three pallets worth. We went with orange ones.  We hope that will be enough to help ward off hungry rabbits.  We also talked with Mr. Halas.  He suggested we plant the corn in rows going from east to west so that the stalks take full advantage of the sun.  We really appreciate the time he spent with us answering our questions.

Since it may be a while until our praying mantises hatch, we thought we'd share this picture from last year.  The sack, known better as a casing, didn't hold as many as the ones from this year; it was much, much smaller. (Our mom got it from a different company.)  We got something like 37 babies last year.  And they were tiny, like ants.  Since they are well camouflaged we don't know if any survived the winter.  Camouflaged means that they blend into their surroundings, making it hard to see them.

Nurturing Nature

Look what arrived yesterday:

These are the sacks praying mantises lay their eggs in. Our instructions said to attach the sacks outdoors, about a foot off the ground. The sacks protect the babies from severe weather until the warm days of summer comes. We decided we want to see the babies so we're keeping them in a brown paper bag on a window sill. It can take up to eight weeks for them to hatch. When they do, we'll have 50 to 200 praying mantises per egg! That's anywhere from 150 to 600 babies!

Once the babies hatch we'll put some in our vegetable garden. The rest will go to work in the corn field we hope to plant this weekend.

.com and Superheroes on Order

We told Mom how difficult it is to share the address to our blog, so she set it up as "dot com" for us.  If you'd like to bookmark our blog, here is the easier address:

http://www.Cornnecticut.com

We can still use the old address that AOL gives us, but this new one will be way easier to share with our friends and family!  Thanks Mom!

Mom also said she ordered us some Superheroes -- Connecticut style!  She ordered us some Praying Mantises!  Praying Mantises are recognized as Connecticut's state bug!  They will arrive in "casings" -- not hatched yet.  We used Praying Mantises in our garden last year; they're really cool!  We can't wait for them to arrive!

The weather has been rainy, so we haven't been outside to check up on our corn.  Hopefully the weather will clear up later today.

The Root of our Inspiration

Our Mom likes to travel to Massachusetts every couple of months to purchase various supplies.  While we are there she takes us to a restaurant called Sylvester's.  It is located in Northampton, Massachusetts. 

Northampton has a lot of ties to our American History, including having Sojourner Truth speaking about the need for equality and justice, and having President Calvin Coolidge starting his political career there.  It was also the home of Sylvester Graham, of whom the restaurant is named after.  Sylvester Graham was the inventor of the very same graham crackers we enjoy eating today!

So there we were one day, sitting in Sylvester's, awaiting for our waitress to bring our lunch order, when we noticed this poster of corn on the wall!  We never knew so many different types of corn existed! 

It was a few weeks later when we decided we would like to grow many different varieties to see what grows best here in Connecticut -- and we've found out since that day in Sylvester's that there are hundreds of different types of corn!   At this website, it explains some of the history of corn.  We are delighted that one of the types of corn it mentions we are growing: Stowell's Evergreen!

Companions in the Garden

At the end of Week One we have seen progress with our seedlings. Many are now showing signs of sprouts, but this one to the left, is showing the most. It's name is Bloody Butcher. We should see even more sprouts by the end of this week.

We spent the afternoon yesterday working in our vegetable garden.  You should have seen it last year before we decided to reclaim it!  It was really overgrown with weeds!  And we ended up with a fairly great crop considering it was our first time.

 Since some of the vegetables we planted last year didn't do so good, Mom bought us a book from our recent school book fair. It's called, "The Old Farmer's Almanac for Kids."  In the chapter, "How does your garden grow?" we learned that plants like other plants for companions, but not all plants like each other!  Some don't do well at all when they are planted next to each other.  This could be why some of our vegetables didn't fair so well last year.  So, using the guide in the book, and considering how big they'll grow, we planted tomatos, squash, zucchini, basil, and eggplant.  Without the corn, as we had planted last year, that left us with plenty of space to try growing other vegetables.  If the weather holds, we'll be planting more later in the week. 

One thing that was great about the book is that it confirmed what Mom told us last year: using Marigold flowers around the outside of the garden will discourage rabbits from feasting on our hard work.  That's good to know as we have wild rabbits too!  We planted 64 Marigolds around the entire garden!  We will need more when it comes time to plant our corn!   So Marigolds are Superheros, just like ladybugs are!  Who knew?!

'Happy Days Are Here Again'

The Kernel stopped by yesterday and looked at the progress of our seedlings.  He thought that we should have directly planted them into the ground.  We told him that we didn't trust the weather yet.  We were surprised to see the Japanese Hulless Popcorn showing the most sprouts so far.

We got to talking about our woodchuck problem.  The moth balls didn't work.  So a few days ago the Kernel put some smoke bombs down every hole we could find.  The smoke bombs can kill them, but we hope that didn't happen.  We hope they smelled the smoke and decided to run away.  We checked the holes and noticed no new activity. 

We hope our woodchuck problem has been solved; we will keep checking just to be sure.  We don't want to celebrate too soon!  Mom said maybe they went to live on FDR's estate.  FDR, our 32nd President, left his home to the Federal Government with a stipulation that they allow woodchucks to live there without being hurt.  Sounds like a great place for woodchucks to live!

We then noticed that the sky had darkened and there was a lot of thunder. We ran into the house just in time! It started pouring rain -- and hail! The hail was as large as quarters and half-dollars! If we had our little sprouts in the ground instead of in the Chinese take-out containers, we think they could have been damaged! The Kernel agreed with us that perhaps it was too soon to put our seedlings in the ground. After the storm passed we saw this double rainbow. Maybe that is a sign good weather is on it's way!