It's that time of year when I am more or less expected to report on the progress of our garden. I bought a kit and soil tested to see why some vegetables don't do as well as they once did. I had small stunted corn and the leaves were pale green to yellow. Corn production was limited.

The soil test showed almost no nitrogen in the soil, so I went off to the co-op for some ammonium nitrate. Yes, the same stuff that bombs are made of. They checked my I.D. and wrote down all of my driver's license info.

Bottom line is that our corn is tall, dark green and growing fast. It's almost time for a windstorm to blow it flat like it does every year.

The beans are making little beans, the tomatoes are the size of golf balls, and we have been eating greens, onions, radishes and other early stuff. No spuds yet.

Next to the garden, the blueberry bushes are filled with ripe blueberries, and that's a good thing considering that we didn't get any cherries this year. There were plenty of cherries on the trees, but they ripened while we were in Alaska and the birds got every single one. Even birds need a treat from time to time.

The green peppers aren't doing well, but I don't know why.

Just for fun, I planted some gourds. I'm made a little money selling them to artists who paint them to sell to tourists. It's a very popular art form in this area.

The hard-work part of gardening is upon us. There is weeding and mulching, picking and freezing. I have a huge mulch pile at the lower end of the garden which means literally hundreds of trips with the wheel barrow. Good for the heart, bad for the back.
Howard