A Drip Before the Deluge

So here we find ourselves in the middle of July, with more work to do that there are hours to do it, and I'm not talking about weeding.  We started harvesting garlic on Tuesday, pulling out some 139 heads, equaling just under 16 pounds of garlic.  Lacking a shed or barn, we were hard-pressed to find a place to cure it.  We ended up stringing it up in an unused as of yet portion of the chicken run, and putting a tarp over it with a support pole in the center sort of like a mini circus tent. 

After not receiving and rain for weeks, we got almost an inch on Wednesday along with some hail.  Most of the corn is now lodged, the runner bean poles fell over, amongst other more minor things.  We learned last year to leave the corn alone, and it may straighten itself back up using its powerful brace roots. 

The Rose Gold potatoes that we planted in mid-April are ready to come up.  The leaves were starting to get pretty crunchy looking about a week ago, and after the storm hit us on Wednesday, I went to survey the damage.  The potato plants looked fine, it's just that the Rose Golds looked like yellow sticks coming out of the hay mulch.  Hopefully tomorrow it'll be dry enough to do some digging. 

Some tomatoes have blossom end rot, but I'm hoping it'll rectify itself.  BER happens due to a lack of calcium.  One possibility is that a large fluctuation in moisture disrupts the previous amount of uptake of calcium to the soil, temporarily causing a lack of calcium available to the fruits.  This is the case with us in the last week as we went from .05 inches of rain in July to over 2 inches in a matter of hours.

Our chickens finally learned to stay inside the coop when it's raining instead of miserably standing around in it.  A very large tom has been gobbling in the pasture every morning this week, and I got my first glimpse of this year's fawns.