Corn Box Day 61

   The Corn Box on Day 61.  The tallest measured 48 inches/ 4 feet tall.  I'm starting to see the fronds of corn 'flower' at the top of some plants.  Daily high has been record-breaking lately with triple digits on consecutive days and the leaves show signs of heat stress.  Today is a bit overcast, so they get a bit of a break from the harsh western Colorado sun.

   The view of the four SFG boxes in our backyard.  I was giving the plants something extra in the form of the kelp solution this morning.  You can see one of our adopted cats, Loki, sitting between the spring SFG box and the corn box.  The kitties love hanging around the boxes.  Luckily, most squares have filled out enough to discourage them from going in too much.  The one bare square in the middle of the spring veggies SFG box where I pulled the bolting spinach is still being targeted, though.    The peas, amazingly enough, have still not died out, but producing some tiny pods still.

   The summer veggies SFG box is looking nice and lush!  I really like the way this box is looking.  The different shades of green from yellow green to grey green and all the different textures are so beautiful!  The eggplant, broccoli, bell pepper plants are really getting big and looking healthy and so are the string and soy beans.  The basil (There are 3 plants in one spot.) is overflowing its square.  The once-lanky Italian parsley has gotten greener and more compact.  I still have a few empty squares in the picture.  I planted more Swiss chard and soy beans this morning so all squares are being used as of today.  I like leafy greens and I am not quite getting enough from that one square of Swiss chard in the spring veggies box, so I'm hoping that I'll start getting more plants to harvest from in about a month. :D

Day 50

   Our first SFG box is celebrating Day 50 today. :D  It's been a wonderfully fun project for my family, but especially for me, who is a huge salad fan.  The box has been very productive and I have been able to eat greens every day for quite some time now.

   This past Thursday and Friday were extremely unpleasant with high winds gusting at upwards of 70 mph all during the daylight hours while the temperature was in the mid to high 80s.  The peas showed their dislike of the hot weather by turning the bottom leaves yellow and dry. ^^;  Considering that I had a late start on these guys (sowing them on April 8th), I can't complain.  Our area's spring is notoriously short.  The daily high has been consistently in the 80s to lower 90s for weeks now.  One thing that made me pleased was the pea support.  The PVC pipes, rebars and the strings held up well in those 70+ mph gusts of winds (which, by the way, knocked down a good size tree limb right onto our roof with a huge BAM!).  The peas are holding onto one another as well as onto the strings and they're standing tall today as if nothing happened.  The "Alaska" peas are at 2.5 feet, which the Asian snow peas are catching up in height.

   Here's a picture of the flowers from the Asian snow peas.   They are white with an orange-pink tinge and different from the pristine white flowers of "Alaska" peas.

   Now that the temperatures are getting so high, I'm thinking about putting up shade cloth to help keep the plants cool in the spring veggies box.  I am seeing a few of the spinach and lettuce plants starting to bolt.

   I found our first normal size strawberry in our strawberry box today. :D  The color is just beautiful against all the green leaves.

   The corn box on Day 34.  The first crop, which you see on the bottom half of the picture was planted 2 weeks before the second crop.  They have maturation dates that are almost 3 weeks apart, so there should be about 5 weeks separating the pollination times of these two crops.  Corn plants, once they get going, grow so fast with such vigor.  Especially since it's been many seasons since I grew any corn in my backyard, this has been exciting.  I'm very curious to see how well they do in the SFG box.  So far, so good!!