Friday, July 21, 2006

Failure!

Since I posted an entry with the title "Success!" the other day, I thought I'd better share some of the failures so that people don't start thinking we're perfect!

Sweet corn. Total and complete failure, the tallest stalks are only about 3 feet tall and they are already starting to tassel out. I don't expect to harvest any corn from my 5 rows of corn, and since the stalks are so short the companion beans are going to need a different form of support or they will be a failure too. The only thing I can think of is that the soil is no good for corn, but nearly everything else is growing so well!

The pear tree. Hundreds of pears, but they have developed some type of scale or other disease. They are all undersized and ugly looking.They might still make good pig feed though.

Beets. The first planting of beets I did are stunted and don't appear to be growing. The second planting did great, however.

Ducks. Not really a failure as they are all healthy and happy and ducky, but I had a very romantic notion of ducks calmly wandering about the yard. Unfortunately the reality is they are loud, unfriendly, demanding and messy creatures.

3 comments:

BJ not BK said...

I am not a big fan of the beets so I wouldn't chalk that one up as a failure.

Anonymous said...

You may recall the old Thanksgiving story of how the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow food in the new world. One of their tricks was to bury a dead fish beneath the planted corn seed. I tried this years ago in Miles City, Montana (went down to the Yellowstone River and caught a bunch of shiners), and it really works! Mom had 8 foot tall sweet corn in her garden that year. Try that next year.

Shirley Andrews said...

Hi, thanks for posting this