My personal Giant and Backyard Giants

I apologize that it has been three long weeks since I have blogged here or added anything to Veggie Garden Info. As some of you already knew, for the past three years my dad had been battling prostate cancer, bone cancer and eventually even brain cancer. I had to take this time off from blogging and from work to be with him in his last days. His body finally gave up the fight last Friday, September 7th.

Although he is now absent from this earth, he is present with the Lord in heaven! I rejoice in that fact but even still it has been a sad time for me and my family.

I have always looked up to my dad. Even though he wasn't much taller than me, I've always thought of him as a giant with a giant heart. He was always an avid non-fiction reader and always said that you could learn how to do anything from reading. Almost 20 years ago, I took his advice and decided to learn about something I knew nothing about - organic gardening.

My mom had introduced me to vegetable gardening as a boy, but at that time I viewed it as all work and no fun. Just after college, I began reading every gardening book the library had and then put into practice what I learned. So now, I will think of my dad when I'm out in the garden.

Speaking of the love of reading, the love of gardening and of giants - I want to mention the new book by Susan Warren called "Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever."

I was thrilled to receive an advanced reading copy a few weeks ago to review, but I haven't been able to finish the book or to write the review yet. I love the book so far and I can't wait to learn the outcome.

I feel bad about not posting a review like I promised, so for now I will direct you to Backyard Giants reviews by some of my favorite bloggers:

Michelle at My Grandpa's Garden

Stuart at Gardening Tips 'n' Ideas

Steven at Dirt Sun Rain

Emma at Garden-Ideas

Colleen at In The Garden Online

Hannah at This Garden is Illegal

Genie at The Inadvertent Gardener

Carol at May Dreams Gardens
(Her comments about the book are at the end of this post)

Kenny from Veggie Gardening Tips went one step further and actually had the author, Susan Warren, as a guest writer. She discusses her own attempt to grow giant pumpkins.

I look forward to finishing the book. Pumpkins of any size are indeed fun! I think my pumpkins are too far behind thanks to my groundhog (still at large, by the way). Even though I probably won't get ripe pumpkins this year, I am enjoying the big blooms - the only thing blooming right now.

Thank you to all of you who have been worrying about me in my absence. Special thanks to Kenny, Curtis and Emma for the emails (which I have just got).

I will try to get back to posting regularly and managing Veggie Garden Info as well. It is still difficult to focus on things other than family right now, so bear with me if I'm slow in getting back to it. :)

Now it's personal; Waging war on the groundhog!

I was feeling sorry for the groundhog because of the drought and heatwave that we are suffering with. There is very little water or food available in the wild. I had almost even forgiven him for eating all of our bean leaves, all of the cucumber leaves, some tomatoes and zucchini and all of the zucchini leaves. But now he has gone too far. He has crossed the line! He has begun eating my beautiful pumpkin plants!

Come on Mr. Woodchuck, at least let a man grow some big pumpkins for his children to enjoy at Halloween. I haven't even gotten around to putting a post on about the pumpkins.

I purposely started them late so they wouldn't get too big too soon. They are at the end of the garden and I am letting them grow out onto old carpet and tarps.

Things were growing along great and we had a dozen or so baby pumpkins.

Many of them had grown much bigger that that photo, but now Mr. Groundhog has eaten them and some of the leaves! It's time to declare war. My Have-a-heart trap was loaned to my in laws and I am getting it back tomorrow night. At the rate the groundhog is going though, that's too long to wait.

Sometimes a gardener has got to do what a gardener has got to do. I must sit out in the garden all night and all day tomorrow and make sure the groundhog doesn't eat anything else!

Of course I can't really do that, so my daughters and I whipped up a quick likeness of me, set it next to the pumpkins with a 24-hour-a-day talk radio station loudly playing. My wife added soap to the scarecrow to add more "human smell". I hope it works.

Tomorrow night we will set the Have-a-heart trap and hopefully on Sunday Mr. Groundhog and I will take a nice long drive to his new home.

Get ready Mr. Hog, soon it will be moving day!

A Big Change in Garden Plans

I re-built my entire raised bed vegetable garden this year.

It was a lot more work than I expected and it has put me behind schedule on much of my planting. At the end of June I had one major construction left; building the corn bed and the fence to go around it. It was one of the things on my 2007 garden to do list, and was to provide protection for the corn and trellis space for cucumbers, melons, pole beans, miniature pumpkins and flowers. It was an idea that began when snow was on the ground and I was excited to do it. Even though I was way behind schedule, I set out to build my 6 foot tall fence.

It was hard work driving the fence posts in with a sledge hammer. The posts were so long that I had to get up on a step ladder to drive them!

Finally the fence posts were in and it was time to attach the fence.

I had never done this before and had no idea how to do it. I tried attaching the fence with the little hooks built in to the post but that didn't work. It was also near impossible to stretch the fence taught by myself. I kept getting scratched by the end of the fence. Also the posts were level and straight but the ground sloped. Bottom line, I was in over my head.

By now it was almost the 4th of July and time for our family vacation. So what did I do? A pessimist would say I admitted defeat and threw in the towel. An optimist like me would say I improvised and switched to plan B for the garden design.

I took down the fence (getting scratched even more) and dug out the fence posts.

I rounded up my scrap wood and built two more garden beds.

I decided we would have to wait another year to find out if Mirai 301BC corn is really the corn that everyone talks about. I planted my root-bound cucumbers in one of the beds along with another sowing of bush green beans. I used the other bed to solve another problem. I had planned to till an entirely new area for a pumpkin patch but hadn't done it yet. So instead of engaging in all of that extra work, I planted my pumpkin plants in the other bed where the corn was to go. It is at the far end of the garden so the pumpkin vines will grow out into the yard. I will try to stay ahead of the vines and put down tarps and old carpet to kill the grass and allow the vines to lay on top. Next year, I will then make more garden beds in that spot.

So here is the finished product:

You can't see the plants very well but they're there. In another month they will take over the entire area!

These changes are indeed a compromise from what I had hoped to have, but isn't that how gardening goes? Does it ever go exactly as planned? I am just happy that finally - in July - I'm finished with my spring plantings. I hope its not too late to get a Fall harvest before frost.

It is just about time to begin the Fall planting for the Winter harvest!