Corn...

My corn. Abject. Failure. I have pictures, but I'm too ashamed to post them.

Corn, brugmansia

Veg

The boy and I put this little garden patch together this sultry day. He looked at me and said, "Dad, this is how hard kids should be working, not sitting on their rumps watching t.v." Emerson says somewhere how eerie it is to hear your own words echoed back to you.

This corn (Silver Queen) went in around August 20th. It's a bit beleaguered by God knows what, but it seems to be growing faster than the bugs can eat it...

Probably too early for this romaine, but I couldn't pass up the nine-pack at Lowes today.

A garden update in pictures...

My poor, benighted corn ('Silver Queen'). The bugs this time of year are really bad, but I hope that the corn will outgrow/outlast the flea beetles and aphids...

Blue Fortune Agastache (I think)... Highly attractive to bees. Leaves smell like licorice when pinched.

August brings lots of blooms on the roses (here's 'Abram Darby', an English rose that does well here), but their quality is often disappointing. This bloom has been damaged by heavy rain and a bit of fungus.

Dahlia 'Sunshine' from Easytogrowbulbs.com. This dahlia's the first I've found that blooms here in the fall. No disease problems, and a ton of blossoms on the way. Grows under the shade of a huge 'Prosperity' rose.

New to my garden, Rudbeckia triloba.

Duranta erecta, 'Sparkling Showers.' First time it's bloomed all summer. I have a huge D. erecta 'alba' growing nearby. Nice wildlife value, and the flowers work very well in bouquets.

Isn't okra wonderful? (Annie Oakely Okra from Pinetree)

A garden update in pictures...

'Our Lady of Guadalupe'. I understand why it was the favorite rose in a survey of Central FLA rosarians... Amazing blooms, almost hybrid-tea in form, but on a vigorous and well-shaped bush. And apparently pretty disease-resistance, since I don't see a spot of black-spot.

First day back to school...

My garden, ready for fall planting.

New micro-spray sprinkler in action... love it!

Silver Queen Corn growing amongst some Mississippi Silver Crowder peas.

Tropical Corn

I'm going to give a shot at growing a small patch (sixteen square feet) of sweet corn this fall, sowing sometime in August, hopefully harvesting some ears for Thanksgiving. After a lot of searching, I chose Silver Princess Hybrid, since it offers very early harvest, good disease resistance, and sturdy plants. I poked around the 'net for advice on growing corn in a sub-tropical climate (which ours is, kind of...) and came across this great picture of tropical corn in Peru from Breeding Field Crops.

Corn used to be grown extensively here in Central Florida, but that period ended with the Lake Apopka cleanup effort, which involved buying out hundreds of acres of field, many devoted to corn. The phosphorous and nitrogen run-off from these farms, combined with degraded wetlands caused by wanton development, destroyed the ecosystem supporting Lake Apopka,. When I moved here at the end of the 1990s, wading birds were (no exaggeration) falling dead from the sky and Apopka's shores were lined with dead bass...

There is at least one farm -- Scott's -- around Zellwood, FLA, which grows significant crops of corn, and, even though I wince at the ecological harm and the amount of pesticides and fungicides, I buy some every fall and again at the end of spring. Zellwood grows seriously good corn, for sale from the backs of pickups on byways at fifty-cents an ear. One of our family fall/spring traditions is to hold a shrimp boil made of Zellwood corn, potatoes and freshly-caught shrimp. We also find the time to visit the Zellwood Corn Maze in October to buy pumpkins and corn.