It Can Only Get Better!

I did not grow a garden this year.

I grew a Demonstration Plot for Insect Pests, Diseases, and Nutrient Deficiencies.

Or, as mothers everywhere have said, if it can't be good for anything, at least its a bad example.

I planted green beans and beans for drying, corn and popcorn and field corn, lettuce and spinach and kale and other greens, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, onions and garlic, carrots and beets, summer squash and winter and pumpkins and melons.

I have grown all of these successfully before.

The beans, different varieties planted in succession over the summer, were repeatedly chomped down by Mexican bean beetles. I had never even seen these pests before; this summer I handpicked thousands and didn't make a dent.

The corn looked ok, if a little pale, but for some reason pollination was sketchy and many cobs had only a handful of kernels.

Any greens that did germinate in the intense summer heat (yes, I know these should be planted in spring but my plot wasn't tilled until late) were eaten by insects that I never even saw.

The tomatoes did fairly well, except for blossom end rot (another problem I had never seen). I gave them some water with calcium pills dissolved in it and this seemed to help.

The potatoes did fine! Hallelujah. As did the peanuts.

My onions struggled and the few that made it were soft and rotted easily. The garlic came through for me--the grounds are covered with wild garlic so it seems the soil is hospitable for something.

Carrots never came up, beets were sketchy,

 And the pumpkins and friends were attacked by squash borers. Dare I say I've never seen these before either? Add to that, the blossoms were moldy--in a summer where we didn't have a drop of rain for almost a month.

This tale of woe indicates to me that I have a lot to learn about gardening in the Midwest. 


I'll spend the winter researching and working on my plan of attack. Trying to garden organically surrounded by GMO, chemically raised crops will not be easy and I know I have my work cut out for me. But a gardener always knows next year will be better, and as they say in Galaxy Quest, "Never give up, never surrender!"

  

Going nuts

Twenty-first century Americans have no concept of the work involved in the food that is on their table.

Peanut butter is a perfect example.

A staple of childhood sandwiches, peanut butter remains a big part of our diet. We all know that peanut butter is ground up peanuts, but have you ever really thought about the process?

Peanuts are easy to grow if you live somewhere with a long growing season, at least 110 frost free days. This year, I started some indoors and planted the rest after the ground had warmed up. I really didn't see much difference between the plants as the season progressed. 

Most people realize that peanuts are not really nuts. They are legumes and peanuts themselves form on the roots underground, kind of like potatoes. They were one of the very few vegetables I grew this year that were not riddled with pests or other problems, needing only some weeding. And to harvest you just pull up the entire plant and let dry.

I have to admit I didn't keep good records here- I planted about a handful of seeds in a bed about 30 square feet. I harvested maybe 8 times that. Or to look at it another way, each peanut produced one plant which had three or four shells on it, each containing two or three nuts.

So, I've planted and grown and harvested the peanuts. Now they'll have to be thoroughly washed and shelled and roasted. Finally, the cooked peanut can be smashed up and, voila, peanut butter.

And will I be awash in the gooey stuff from my vast peanut field? The National Peanut Board estimates that it takes about 540 peanuts to make a twelve ounce jar, or about 45 nuts per ounce. My pitiful pile might yield enough for a sandwich or two. 

We're spoiled by the small effort it takes to pick up a jar of peanut butter in the market. Grow some peanuts of your own and you'll wonder at the work that goes into making this country's thousands of daily pbj's.