Mixed Results

I harvested the corn today. As you can see it is pretty pitiful. The pop corn did better than the sweet corn. It would turn out that my corn started making ears when the rain stopped. Moral of that story, start corn earlier. In fact, I should have started everything earlier. Next year, I am going to do a little math and try to plant backwards. Start from the the point that the drought usually begins and count backward the number of days each particular plant needs in order to produce fruit. Sort of like working with the last freeze date but backwards. Maybe that way the plants can produce fruit before the water runs out. So if the corn needs 70 days, then I need to plant it in the middle of April. I will have to go back and look, but I am pretty sure it was late May before I planted it this year. My tomatoes are suffering from the same fate. There have only been two tomatoes so far, though the yellow pear is still setting fruit. I will be fall before they begin again. I only plant indeterminate tomatoes.

I am still going to plant more corn this summer and give it one more shot. Maybe, we will get more rain. I will just grow the popcorn, not the sweet corn.

In other Debbi's Garden news, IT RAINED. We have had about half a inch so far. My rain barrel has rainwater in it. One-half inch of rain equals about half a barrel of water. I am pretty excited.