Karen's Garden Delights Journal
1st week of September 2011

Corn & Beans It is definitely beginning to look, sound and feel more like fall. The summer crops are beginning to fade, crickets are singing like crazy and we are starting to need jackets on the chilly days. As the evenings get darker much earlier I am both sad to see summer slip away but I also long for some winter rest and reading. Here is one of the fall crops in action, I planted Bloody Butcher corn in circles of about 8 plants and then planted Greasy Corn Beans to climb up the corn with sweet potatoes to cover the ground. Some of the corn is 11 feet high and you can see the beans really climbing up the stalk. The corn will be used for corn meal and I'll let the beans dry for soup beans. Some other fall things starting to produce are cabbage, broccoli, boy choy and salad greens. The turnip greens and Daikon radish leaves are really taking off too. We worked hard to get the carrot and beet beds carefully weeded which can be a challenge with delicate little plants.

Praying Mantis As you know, I love beneficial insects and watching them in action. The flower border and especially herbs going to seed like dill, parsley and fennel are a haven for all sorts of buzzing creatures. Many of them are hard-working pollinators and a few go after the bad bugs. Here is a praying mantis the children found and soon we should be seeing newly laid egg cases. The female lays her eggs and covers them with a blob of something looking like tan styrofoam. Our children make it a game to see who can locate the most egg cases. The only rule is that NONE of them are allowed in the house. About 100-200 baby praying mantises will hatch from one case and that is not an ideal indoor project! This week I took an egg case into the Wooster High School Environmental Science class where I talked on farming. Only one person in a class of 23 knew what it was. Can you identify a praying mantis egg case?

Botany Class In the midst of garden harvesting and fall garden tasks, our family is also starting our homeschool schedule. Our "harvest schedule" helps us cover just the basics while we are still working outdoors. One of the subjects we are studying this year is Botany which is perfect for an afternoon outdoor session. The children needed to find an angiosperm, gymnosperm, vascular plant and a seedless non-vascular plant and draw them. It was handy to have all those plants within a small radius and we are all learning more about the intricacies that God put into all the plants and weeds around us. In a couple weeks, our family will be sharing edible weeds as part of our homeschool co-op Nature Study group. We also plan to take along some "pioneer legos" (burdock!) for the group to play with.