liquid sunshine and the slow moving bandidos

Well rain is usually helpful in a garden but 3 straight weeks of the stuff is not. Certain seeds need heat/sun to even germinate (sprout) and corn is one of them. Beth planted a ton of corn but only a handful have appeared and those only popped up this week. "Knee high by the forth of July" is the old adage for how tall your corn plants should be for them to be ready in time. Ours will be nowhere near that. I've noticed that farmers around us are having the same problem. They're growing feed corn (for animals or fuel, not for human consumption) but even it is tiny and yellower than I remember it last year.
Corn is a tough crop to grow here in the NW. It needs a fair amount of nitrogen in the soil and a long hot summer to really mature. I tossed some nitrogen rich fertilizer in there at the end of the season last year so that should be good but there's nothing I can do with this weather. If the weather stays cool and overcast and rainy then it looks like our corn will be a bust.

We're not giving up! I love to grow corn, its a part of my childhood. I would spend hours in my folk's garden as a kid out in the corn rows playing with my Hot Wheels cars in and around the stalks. I can't really imagine doing a garden without corn but I am starting to wonder if its a feasible crop to grow out here. We're not out of options yet though! We're going to either plant some more seeds or buy some starts to help get us back on schedule. We'll see how it goes. I just wanted to give you all a heads up so that you know our corn production might not be as good as we'd like it to be...

Sadly the weather isn't the only thing that's causing problems with our garden. Slugs are out in force this year. We had a bit of trouble with them last year but nothing like this. They have taken the greens off of almost all the onions (I've been told that the onions will continue to grow without them), they've devoured the little ball zucchinis we had growing and they even took out an entire zucchini plant! There is a "beer method" where you pour some beer into a cup or bucket that is level with the ground and the beer attracts them to the cup where they either drown or get hammered and die I'm not sure which but it sorta works. I wanted a stronger method so I have put a line of snail bait right at the foot of our fence. It shouldn't interact with the veggies at all since we're not planting anything there. Yesterday I checked and at least a couple slugs were reduced to goo because of that line of death. Tanis and I also noticed that they're also getting to the other zucchinis that are in the middle of the garden. since its in the center and not the edge I will employ the beer method. Hopefully the neighborhood cats will leave it alone and not start a kegger next to the carrots.

On the flip side from a weed standpoint the garden is doing awesome! You guys are doing such a great job and keeping them at bay that there hasn't been a real outbreak yet! Woot!

Also the peas and the beans are popping up all over the place! Well not all over the place but all over where they were planted. If everything goes right we'll have lots of beans and peas.

Here's a question for ya! Why is it that snails/slugs don't eat weeds? How awesome would that be if that's all they did eat?! but noOoOoOoo they have to go after the stuff you plant and water, nurture and throw all of your energy into...and when do they attack? At night!!! the bandits!! So annoying!!!! k, I'm done...

Scott

PS - how many people are now picturing slugs with little sombreros on?!....just me?