The Weekly Digs #68

Remember my excitement last week in planting more corn than we ever had before? The kids helped so much and they were excited too! Well when we went up to our land we noticed our corn was getting attacked by a predator and not the type that can be prevented with a fence. 

Swallow birds were coming down and eating the seeds as soon as they saw the green leaves poking out of the ground. It may seem hard to believe but they ate every corn seed that popped up. Pretty much all 1600 seeds we planted! We were so devastated. Yeah the $30 worth of seed lost was a bummer but I can deal with that. The real sad part was all the time we put in during hot weather (Maybe 2 or 3 hours if I’m remembering right) and aching so bad from swatting and planting that long.

This post contains affiliate links. Here is the full disclosure.

That corn had so much going for it! Since we don’t have any way to water the plants other than rain, I had waited until just the right moment to plant.  My timing for planting the corn was impeccable. It had rained a small amount everyday for a week straight. From all the little holes in the ground we saw it looked like just about everyone germinated. The birds had a wonderful feast.

But I’m not giving up. Now we are experiencing 90 degree weather and we haven’t had rain in over a week. It’s getting so late to grow corn and I’m not sure how it will do, but I am going to try and plant again. I ordered more corn seed and more importantly I also ordered bird netting. I thought about not planting any more corn this year but it’s one of our favorite things in the summer garden!

The idea is to put netting on until the plant gets 5 inches tall and there is no more seed to be found. I’m just hoping that this works. Our garden experience up at the land has been an uphill battle for sure. The first year is definitely the hardest with growing in a new area so we are hopeful for better years to come.

We have also been working on putting our garden fence up this week. We decided on 5 foot tall welded wire, 3 foot tall chicken wire buried one foot underground to keep small animals out at the bottom, and then a strand or two of electric wire at the top. 

Our neighbors already told us that racoons will try and eat all of our fully grown corn so the electric at the top will hopefully keep them out. 

We got two sides done and need to finish that up.

I’m glad we at least have our home garden to fall back on. Everything is looking really good at this point! 

In the garden:

• Transplanted Holy Basil
• Summer squash plants are starting to gain momentum! 
• We are harvesting peas, green onions, kale, too much lettuce, strawberries and the first of the blueberries.
• I started watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and winter squash in soil blocks. I usually plant them straight in the ground but these are going up to the farm garden and there is no way I’m planting until the fence is up!