The Corn Patch

We did it, we actually have a good looking corn crop. The lack of rain, hasn't been in our favor but Carl made up for it with a lot of watering. We have quite a few hoses on the Ranch now - about 1000 feet actually. We, I guess I should say Carl, planted the corn on May 26th. The engineer has to make sure every row is measured and straight but since he used this small corn planter from my parents that kind of bounced around over the dirt clods, the rows aren't perfectly straight - at least to Carl's liking.

We, yes I helped too, hauled off a lot of weeds to get this area ready for the corn but they just keep coming back. I can't even remember how many hours we have spent out there weeding but it's a lot. And there are still a bunch of weeds out there, the weeds are winning this battle for sure. I also planted a 100ft row of zinnias along one side of the corn. They just bloomed in the last week or so. 

This photo shows the corn on July 14th (top photo) and then on July 31st (bottom photo).

 

Carl has put nitrogen on it two times and it really takes off right after that. The rain in the last few weeks has really helped it out too. Although, Carl has become good friends with the sprinkler this summer. The telescoping sprinkler saved our corn.



We planted a few different brands of corn, on the left of the picture below is Pioneer sweet corn, then we planted some Becks corn and not one stalk came up, then on the right side we planted some sweet corn from the hardware store, I can't remember the name.

All of the corn stalks have ears on them but we think it will be a few more weeks until we have corn ready to pick. That's when the fun begins, I guess??? We are hoping to be able to sell some at the farmers market and give some to our families and also can and freeze a bunch for us. Carl keeps telling me there is going to be truckloads of corn to pick and I need to get ready. I'll get back to you in a few weeks to let you know how it goes...hahaha.

Our Big Gardening Idea

Last year at the end of gardening season, Carl and I got the brilliant idea of planting sweet corn and selling it. We have plenty of open ground at the Ranch so we thought we would plant an acre of corn. In theory this was a great idea, it would be approximately 41,000 ears of corn and alot of profit. So for the entire winter we have been planning to have one acre of corn then we went out to measure off the one acre to actually see how big of an area we would be working with and whoa...we changed our minds. That's way to much corn for two people to deal with and that's alot of weeds, watering, fertilizing and more work than we really thought it might be. We have now narrowed our corn patch down to 1/8th of an acre (100'x50'). It's quite a drastic change but we think it will be more manageable especially for our first year. On Sunday, Carl plowed the area that is going to be our new corn patch. It needs alot more work but this is at least a start.

While Carl had the plow hooked up the to the tractor, he worked up an area for my flower garden. This area is 30'x20'. It's going to have a few paths through it so it won't be completely flowers but still it's a pretty big flower garden. I'm planning to plant alot of wild flowers here.

And in plant news, the tomatoes have taken up residence in the living room. Since all of the plants are getting so big, we were running out of room in the dining room that has prime sunshine space.

The other plants are doing quite well in the dining now that the tomatoes have been moved.



Transplanting the Seedlings

Since our little seedlings really took off, we decided to transplant the tomatoes and green peppers to bigger pots before we put them out in the garden. We have been keeping them on a heat mat and under a grow light in our dining room. It's working out really well and the plants keep getting bigger!

Starting our Garden

The time has arrived, we have kicked off the 2012 gardening season with starting some seeds indoors.  Well really we did this two weeks ago but I'm slow at blogging about it. Anyways...here are all the seeds we have to plant this year. Yep, it's alot, we're going to plenty of vegetables and tons of flowers.

Carl started the tomatoes in 2-liter bottle terrariums and some green peppers, jalapenos, broccoli and cabbage in other seedling trays. He had been planning this project for quite awhile and so far everything is growing great. Most of the plants sprouted within a few days, much to our surprise.

Gardening Season is Over

Our first garden on the Rivir Ranch was quite a sucess. We harvested alot of vegetables this year and were able to preserve alot of them too. But all good things must come to an end, so Carl ripped out the tomato and pepper cages and cleared off all the dead plants. Then plowed over the whole garden to get it ready for next year. He also plowed up an additional 20-30 feet on the end to make our 2012 garden even bigger.

Hello Again

Wow, I fell off the blogging trail. Now, I'm back to fill you in on our October happenings. Here are a few highlights.

At the beginning of October I went to Indianapolis for a business convention. Since it wasn't too far of a drive Carl visited me over the weekend and we went to Fogo de Chao. It's one of our favorite restaurants! It's all you can eat meat and it is the best meat you'll ever have. They give you a card that is green on one side and red on the other, when you flip the card to green the gauchos will start bringing you meat and they won't stop until you turn your card to red. After awhile you do have to turn the card to red and breathe a little (and unbutton your pants, haha). Here is Carl with one of the gauchos and a huge piece of steak.

My little sister just finished up the volleyball season and we went to several of her games. Suzanne is pretty much a rock star at volleyball, just like me, haha. Basketball season just started so we're looking forward to those games.



Then we went down to Carl's Alma mater, Purdue, to watch them get creamed by Notre Dame. No further elaboration needed.

With the heat wave that came through the middle of October, one of my pumpkins bit the dust and I had to haul him over to the compost pile. The rest of the pumpkins still look great though!



And the garden was still going strong in October. It was turning out tomatoes and peppers like you wouldn't believe. We've canned so many tomatoes lately, I'm not sure how we are going to eat them all. Just this week Carl canned up 7 quarts of stewed tomatoes and 7 quarts of pasta sauce in addition all the other things we canned earlier this summer.

October is also the start of deer season so Carl has been over at his parents hunting on the weekends quite a bit and I'm participating in a few craft shows the next two weeks so I've been spending a lot of time in the craft room.  I'll be back later with some more of our October adventures. 

Pickin' Pumpkins!

It rained all weekend at the Rivir Ranch but it cleared up for just enough time to pick our pumpkins on Sunday. The pumpkin  patch was quite the success, I had over 80 pumpkins. I'm working on decorating the house, inside and outside, with all of them.

Since it was muddy outside, I put on my big rubber boots with shorts...yep, I know, stylish!

We picked all the pumpkins then used the tractor to haul them up to the house. It took us four trips. And since we didn't want to drive on the new grass, we went all the way around the around yard and up the driveway. Carl drove and I rode on the fender, I'm sure the neighbors were starring.

We also had a bunch of other things to pick in the garden - tomatoes, jalapenos, green peppers, watermelons, zucchinis and squash. We have alot of squash, I'm not sure what we're going to do with all of them yet.

Garden Update

The garden is still churning out vegetables like there is no tomorrow. Most people say that we have good dirt here on the ranch, which we probably do, but really it's the gardeners who made this such a great garden. The tomato and pepper plants have went crazy the last few weeks and are starting to take over the garden right now.

This isn't a very clear picture but you can kind of see that the tomato plant on the end has worked himself over to the fence on the edge of the garden is beginning to push it out and made its way past the broccoli and over to the peppers.

Here is the jalapeno pepper plant; however, we refer to it as being more like a bush or small tree. That thing is huge and it has a ton of peppers on it.

Here are the jalapenos that I hauled in on Wednesday and there are probably twice this many on the plant that will need picked in the next few days.

And then my prized pumpkins. These babies really took off this year and I couldn't be more excited. Next year, I'm going to plant alot more!







Can 'Em Up!

Since I picked so many green beans on Sunday, we needed to preserve them fast. There is no way that two people can eat that many green beans in one week. 

So the person that picked all the beans also got the joy of snipping the ends off all the green beans. Apparently, picking and snipping green beans is Carl’s least favorite part of gardening so it then becomes my job. Yay me!

After I got the beans snipped, I snapped them all in half so they would easily fit into the canning jars.

Then Carl cooked the beans and filled the jars.

After the jars were filled and sealed up, Carl put them into the pressure cooker. And yes, we are using a pressure cooker on a glass top stove. We special ordered the stove so that it would have a 12 inch burner to handle the pressure cooker and it worked great.

We cooked the jars of green beans in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes and then let the pressure cool off. Then out came the great looking jars of freshly canned green beans.

Since we had more green beans than would fit in the pressure cooker and it was getting late, we just blanched the rest of them and froze them.

Holy Vegetables!

We spent some time picking vegetables on Sunday and there were a lot of things to be picked. 

**Note: Lindsey picked all the green beans.

More Veggies

Here are all the vegetables we picked today. The tomatoes are finally ready to start picking but this is just the start of them.

Garden Gone Wild

Since we last wrote about the garden it has grown expontentially! We have harvested lots of vegetables and now I'm running out of recipe ideas for cabbage, zuchinni and cucumbers. Sit back and get ready for a bunch of garden pictures.

You can see how the garden has really grown in the last month here. No fertilizer either just water and TLC.

We planted cilantro from seed this year. We planted a ten foot row and it was more than enough for the few recipes we use cilantro in.

The pumpkins continue to take over the end of the garden. There are alot of small ones and a few big pumpkins in there too. This just might be favorite thing in the garden and the flowers too.

We put a fence around the whole garden when we planted it to keep the rabbits out but the pumpkins were pushing the fence out and we eventually had to take the fence down. They grew well beyond where the fence was at.

The zuchinni plant has been producing zuchinni like crazy! And if you over look one by the time you get out there the next night it has turned into a small boat sized zuchinni. 

The melons got off to a slower start compared to the other plants but they really picked up the growing pace. Now we have several good sized canteloupes and watermelons.  They also took over the row where the beets were planted but we have pulled all of those now so the melons are on their way towards the green beans.



The jalepeno plant is more like a small bush.

We picked a bunch of green peppers, jalepenos and zuchinni this week.



The green beans could use a little dust...

The onions are looking pretty good too. I want to pull one out to see how big there but Carl vetos me  . In the background of this picture you can see that we got a sprinkler. Carl created the contraption underneath so  it would reach the whole garden. Now he doesn't have to water the whole garden with the little watering can. After Suzanne left a comment about how she couldn't believe he watered the garden with the little watering can we went to Menards to buy a sprinkler.





I planted a some zinnias and sunflowers this year. Gorgeous as always.

And finally, the corn. The corn wasn't very tall so we didn't have to high of hopes for it but it did produce some small ears of corn.