We enjoyed the concert and fireworks in the park Thursday night July 3. We also enjoyed family cookout with niece Carla Warren on Saturday July 5. We just took it easy on the 4^th.

We’re getting ready to head to the redneck Riviera Tuesday-Saturday next week with Lisa and Michael and their families. We’ll be in 2 beachfront Phoenix condos. We enjoy that time together and watching the granddarlings play, and getting to see brother-in-law Dave Warren who lives in Pensacola.

We picked and delivered to the local Food Pantry from the Collierville Victory Garden this week 103.7 lbs of squash, cucumbers, zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, purplehull peas, and jalapeno peppers for a year-to-date total of 435.6 lbs.

Then another 9.8 lbs this morning July 7 for Page Robbins Adult Day care for YTD total of 445.4 lbs. We have begun planning the fall garden. The flower beds and flowers in the veggie beds are in full bloom and gorgeous and doing a wonderful job of attracting bees to do the pollination.

Collierville Victory Garden Thursday July 3 2008 harvest:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=5jpx39n.bt7sqihv&Uy=-gguuth&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=571643352619_837809222307&localeid=en_US

I have joined the rest of the family on www.facebook.com as Carl Wayne Hardeman.

Column / Short Story:

Some More Convenient Day June 4, 2008

“Some more convenient day….” ~P.P. Bliss, from the hymn: Almost Persuaded

Have you ever noticed when you have an all volunteer effort, such as our Victory Garden for the needy, most of the work is done by a few people?

It is true that if you want something done, ask a busy person. When I came up with the proposal for the garden, I asked the two busiest gardeners I know, and they immediately agreed not only to work, but to help lead and coordinate the work. I have not been disappointed, and stand amazed at their hard work.

We have raised a garden for the needy both last year and again this year. All the produce is donated to local charities, mainly the local Food Pantry. We are blessed with a long list of people who can work every now and then and even more blessed with a small group who work when it needs done.

A preacher once said something about not doing evangelism, but being an evangelist. Gardening is the same in that you don’t do gardening, you are a gardener.

Garden work, other than the gathering the harvest, is not glamorous. It is working in the dirt and getting dirty and hot and sweaty. It’s pulling or hoeing weeds. It’s dragging hoses and mixing and spraying foliar fertilizer. It’s spreading rotted manure.

And in our style of sustainable gardening, it is grabbing bags of leaves and grass from curbside, hauling them in your trunk or back seat to the garden, grinding them up with a mulching lawn mower, and spreading them on the garden, and saving newspapers to lay in the garden to keep down weeds and conserve moisture.

As any veggie gardener knows, you work a garden when the work needs done. My daddy-in-law says you can lose a crop sleeping till sunup. The work has to be done come rain or shine. It’s a personal sacrifice of not doing other things. And it is honoring a commitment.

There’s about a one or two day difference between weeds starting to appear and a crop lost in weeds. A garden which needs watering can’t wait until next week. Ripe veggies can’t wait until the weekend or next week or the next weekend.

A veggie garden can’t wait for “ some more convenient day” and hungry people at the Food Pantry shouldn’t have to wait.

Aint God good!

Carl Wayne Hardeman, Master Gardener mymaters@yahoo.com

An OLD column/newsletter:

Growing Taters Carl Wayne June 29, 2007

“Every problem has a solution; you just have to find it.”

~Janet Stevenson

Every tater vine has at least one tater; you just have to find it. You can go back and redig each row and almost always find one more tater. It’s more fun than finding

Easter eggs, or your chewing gum in the chicken yard.

We dug taters in our garden this week, then tilled it all up and planted crowder peas and more okra. In 110 feet of rows we had carefully dug, I tilled up 7 more nice taters.

Growing good old Pontotoc County MS red russet taters is easy. Ralph Graham, my daddy-in-law, told me about them poking seed taters into a big pile of sweepings at the feed mill where he worked. It seems they grew about as well as those lovingly and carefully placed in deeply worked soil in his garden.

Nowadays he and I do things the easiest way we know. Since he had told me about some folks simply laying seed taters on top of loosely tilled soil and covering them deeply with straw, we decided to fill containers with straw and a little planting mix and lay the seed taters in them.

When we harvest, all we will do is dump them out. It’s not as much fun, but a whole lot less work than digging them, and we hope to get almost as many taters.

Potatoes were an important crop in the “old sod” for those of Scots and Irish heritage, which the Grahams are. They grow deep and tall (the potatoes, not the Grahams) in the cool damp climate of the British Isles.

Taters can be planted early and harvested early. They break the dietary boredom of long winters long before vegetables are ready in the garden.

In the garden we hilled up the rows and planted the seed taters deep and covered them with straw. When the vines began to bloom and the soil cracked, Ralph says they would grabble stemwinders. He had to explain to me this meant they stole new taters from under the vines. I’ve eaten boiled new taters many times. My momma-in-law Opal can cook new taters which will melt in your mouth.

A story I once heard had one farmer asking another about his tater crop. He said it was just fine. He had some the size of a quarter, some the size of a fifty cents piece, and then he had a few small ones.

Ain’t God good!

Carl Wayne, Master Gardener

mymaters@yahoo.com

Web Gleanings:

Quotes:

From http://www.savvygardener.com/:

Although tomatoes are self-pollinating, they need movement to transfer pollen. If it is hot and calm for several days you may need to gently shake your plants to assure that pollen

is properly transferred. Very hot temperatures can also interfere with blossomset. “Gardens, scholars say, are the first sign of commitment to a community. When people plant corn they are saying, let’s stay here. And by their connection to the land, they are connected to one another.”

~ Anne Raver

Thomas Jefferson:

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

Humor:

If elected, I will:

http://www.news3online.com/index.php?code=3N21nM542u85tg10pfma

Creative web site:

http://producten.hema.nl/

The half-wit:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071210155048AAGBAI8

Science & Ecology & Medicine:

10 new facts about birds: