Cedar Rapids court house Thursday.
Another part of Cedar Rapids Thursday.
Above photos: (AP Photo/Steve Pope)
The flooding this week has been disastrous. Des Moines, Iowa City, Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids, all under water. Close to 10,000 people forced to evacuate their homes. Cedar Rapids is still without clean drinking water. Thousands of city blocks were claimed by the river.
Events like this remind me again why I want to have emergency preparedness kits. Right now the people in Cedar Rapids have no water, some have no gas/electricity and all are pretty much stuck where they are until the waters recede. All major access routes in and out of the city are under water. Hospitals have been shut down. How many of those people had the necessary supplies for something like this? Probably not many.
Amidst the chaos this week has brought it was nice to get in my garden this morning and put my little piece of earth back to rights. The wind is so fierce today I couldn't get my floating row cover back over my South row. It'll have to wait till tomorrow. My wild flower patch has started to bloom. :-) I managed to save 4 little swiss chard plants. If I can get those to grow to maturity I should have a nice replacement for the lettuce. Beans are growing fast. Tomatoes are taking a beating in this wind, but several still have blossoms and all are healthy looking. Garlic, Onions and Carrots have the same story. My broccoli has started to head. Mmmm broccoli. Squash is busy putting out runners. The watermelon vine is looking kinda splotchy, but I'm hopeful it'll put through. Mustard is flowering. I'm excited to see if I get usable brown mustard seeds from the patch. So far so good.
My pea vines are going gang busters. I did run into a slight problem as I had planted two kinds of peas close together. I have a shell pea and a snow pea. The harvest time is about a week different for the two, as one you leave in the shell and eat it with the immature peas inside and the other you wait till the peas inside are mature and split them out of the pod. I thought it would be easy to tell them apart when it came time to harvest... I think it's maybe not so easy. :-) Some were clearly one or the other, but there were a handful I just had to guess on. Hope I got it right, but I guess it doesn't matter too much either way.
Harvest totals today:
273 grams of lettuce, we've officially got more that we can eat. :-)
80 grams PEAS!!
20 grams baby carrots.
2 comments:
Amazing. You've done very well this year. You've pulled in some great harvest totals- a quarter kilo today, 314 grams in May, 303 grams o' greens last week- That's a lot of leafy goodness. If it bolts and you're stuck with too much I'd trade for herbs or something. I've got Thai Basil, Cinammon basil, Sage, three varieties of mint, Stevia, Rosemary, Lemon Balm, Society Garlic, and my Super Chili should be ready for harvest in a week or two- I'm glad I brought it inside the kitchen over the winter, it's solid, no exaggeration, with fruit. Anyway, are you planning on a fall crop?
Fall crop is definitely a go. Most of it will be in containers, the lettuce crop will be in my cold frame that I'll have to move and rebuild in Des Moines.
Lettuce will be yours sometime this week. I'll harvest more either tonight or tomorrow.
Post a Comment