One group of 3 carrots that I pulled up today was caught bifurcating in a rather dirty looking way:

Reference : http://jimmycrackedcorn.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/garden-flood-today/

4 weeks after the garden had flooded, things were back on track and looking great!  (Camera broken, take my word for it.)  NOW, the creek flooded again today!

One whole bed of Blue Lake Bush Beans and some sweet corn was ruined by the rushing water.  Half the bed containing watermelons was also submerged and is looking very bad.  Time will tell if those plants will recover.  I pulled all the carrots early, and some of them are too small to even try to eat.  Kinda sucks.

So, before planting next year, the bottom 4 raised beds will be…raised…more.  Right now they are all built out of 2×6 lumber.  Next year I’ll add a 12 inch course to the lowest bed by the fence (#1 in the image below), a 10 inch course to the bed on the next highest elevation (#2) and a course of 2×8’s to beds #3 and #4.  The two beds farthest from the fence seem pretty safe from the flood water, but as a matter of aesthetics I might go ahead and raise them each 6 inches higher as well.  Looks like I’ll need to order dirt again…probably even more than the 4 cubic yards I ordered to get started.

In the week(s) after I get my repaired camera back from Canon, I’ll post lots and lots of garden photos!  I’ll update on the cucumbers, cantaloupes, watermelons, tomatoes, green beans, peppers, eggplant, green onion, carrots and probably more.

Stay tuned!

I blogged last week about my two Canon cameras that broke due to no fault of my own.  My ZR-90 camcorder hasn’t worked for about 2 years and my Powershot S1 IS has just failed this month.  In that post I mentioned that apparently both cameras are subject to a recall and should get repaired for free.

There has been positive progress on this subject.  I received my email messages, from which I could print out free UPS shipping labels, late on Friday the 20th.  So on Monday I packed and shipped the cameras away.

Just within the last 16 hours, I have received two separate email messages saying that my cameras have been received and initially evaluated.  Both are scheduled to be repaired for FREE and sent back to me within 7 days!

I am very excited.

The fine print:

Please note that in the unlikely event that any additional internal damage is found due to liquid/water, sand, corrosion, battery leakage or impact (such as dropping the unit), a revised estimate will be sent for your authorization, since these conditions are specifically excluded from warranty coverage.

Saturday we were going to spend a couple days in St. Louis but the Mississippi river situation was a little scary so instead we drove to Wildlife Prairie state park near Peoria, Illinois.  We would have invited the grandparents to join us but it was a really last minute decision to go.  PDF Map of the Park.

It was a nice place, but we had it almost entirely to ourselves.  They won’t be able to keep up the place if their attendance is always that low.  It was pretty nice there.  Not a whole lot to do like a bigger place, but very relaxed and fun.  In general they could have done more to just make people aware of what was available there.

One thing they had set up was a pioneer homestead farm area.  I liked wandering in the garden.  They had a gooseberry bush and I stole a ripe one.  It reminded me of the ones that my grandpa Les had along the driveway when I was a kid.  I’m going to try to find a place for a gooseberry bush in my yard.  The boys loved spending their quarters to feed oats to the nubian goats.

We also watched a predatory bird show.  They had a turkey vulture there out of the cage and up close.  They also let an owl fly around the room to different perches to pick up bits of cut up mouse.

In another area of the park they had a bald eagle in a relatively tiny, rickety enclosure.  It looked temporary, and there was a building project going on that might have been a more permanent home for him.

The boys’ favorite part was the 3-story slide built into a hill.  S. did it 10 times.  That’s a lot of stairs!

We learned from their brochures and web site that they have four old train cabooses refitted as hotel rooms with air conditioning.  For $80 per weekend night I think we might do that with the kids next year.  The kids could fish in a nearby lake until dusk and then we could grill out.

Canon cameras have been a sore subject with me for a couple years now.  I tried not to dwell on it, but I sure didn’t appreciate owning a broken product that I couldn’t use.  It has been about 2 years now without a video camera while my boys get older every day.  I lived with it because I had a digital camera to use.  Until last week…

Let me introduce you to the suspects:

The video camera is a Canon ZR-90.  I bought it as a replacement for our Canon ZR-10, which I put MANY hours of use on without a problem.  The ZR-10 was still working, so I sold it to my wife’s sister when I got the ZR-90. The ZR-90 video camera was nice at first, but suddenly one day it just didn’t work right.  Instead of seeing the lens image on the screen, I just got a black screen.  It would play tapes I had previously recorded, and it would record from another source (like the computer), but something was wrong with the lens.  Bummer.  I had no money for a replacement video camera, but at least I still had another way to capture memories.

The digital camera that I took to using is a Canon Powershot S1 IS. We got it when our former digicam accidentally got dropped.  I had owned the Powershot S1 for almost 3 years when it suddenly began having an electrical glitch that would put purple stripes in the image both on the viewfinder and in the picture.  Then that image sensor stopped working too.

And just like that…no camera at all.

I was pretty bummed to be completely without any camera.  On a whim I did a Google search about them. Mostly I wanted to read reviews from people who have used them as long as I had to see if I was the only one this unlucky.

I’m not the only one.

In fact, so many Canon CCD image sensors have gone bad that I learned today that they will fix both my cameras for free and also pay for shipping both ways.

Can it get even better? Yes! Rumor has it that they don’t actually fix them at all…they just send you a refurbished newer model!  The Powershot S1 is a 3.2 megapixel camera.  Most folks lately have been receiving the Powershot S5 8.0 megapixel camera as a “repair”!!!  If that happens it will be quite a bonus.

At the moment I’m waiting for two separate emails that they promised to send me.  From those messages I should be able to follow a link to print a UPS shipping label.  Many folks online have had pretty fast turnaround (less than 2 weeks) to get their repaired/replaced cameras back.

I have my hopes up that this is really all going to be free.  We’ll see.  You’ll hear it here first.

The lettuces are done.  They never made a head…it just got too warm for them and now they are bitter and milky inside.  I pulled all of them out.  We did eat 5 or 6 salads from the garden.

The last bed of radishes did not form bulbs…headless!  All carrots are coming along slowly, very slowly.

The broccoli is definitely done and I pulled all of them, even the small ones that hadn’t made anything to eat yet.  The cauliflower failed completely, so I pulled some of them and will pull the rest tomorrow. Maybe after I raise the beds higher next year I’ll have better luck with those two.

The cucumber vines are starting to grow.  I can see a little baby cucumber once in a while but I can’t find it the next day.  I’m starting to think I’m not going crazy and that a squirrel or bird or slug or something is taking them.

The zucchini is doing great and has quite a few little veggies growing along for me.

The green peppers, jalapenos, etc are still very small, very slow growing.  I hope they start putting on some size soon and maybe setting some veggies too.

The peas look horrible.  They got started too late because the early planting rotted in the ground. This is a strange wet year.

The watermelons and cantaloupe are growing vines slowly.  I’m not too hopeful about them.

The jackolanterns and pumpkin gourds are doing GREAT.  Taking up a lot of space and growing like crazy…bigger every day.

The green beans seem to be doing fine.  I have them planted in three 4×3 foot sections, planted every 10 days or so to stagger the harvest a bit.  I’ll attempt one more planting of green beans in the bed where the broccoli and cauliflower were, probably early this week.

Today I built a trellis for the supposedly smaller tomatoes that I was planning to just stake up with a short stake.  I wish I could show some pictures but our very nice digital camera is broken.  I’ll have to grab a cheapie for the time being.  I wouldn’t want to lose my loyal fans for lack of pictures.

I transplanted a few extra cucumber plants to a container on the back porch.  We have an old aluminum roof/awning and I’m going to let these cucumbers climb the roof legs.  It might even look decorative.

There is a rather big party here on the 4th of July.  I have to get the garage cleaned up nice enough to serve food in (which will include moving the table saw back into the back corner).  I probably need to move the lumber that was/will be the tree house but I don’t know where else to put it.  I could put it outside the fence, but if the creek floods again it will all float away.  It might just have to stay put as an ugly eyesore in the middle of the yard.  Maybe I’ll get started on putting it back up…I do have 2 full weeks and then some.

When I was planting out my seedlings I didn’t move them all outside at the same time.  I was afraid that I would get hit by a cold snap and lose them all.

One step along the way was when I planted out 4 of my 12 tomato plants, one from each variety I grew this year.  They have been in the ground perhaps two weeks longer than the rest.

Well it shows!  Out in the garden right now I have 4 tomato plants with just TONS of green tomatoes, some already much bigger than a golf ball.  Those first 4 plants!  One of each variety.

The plants that were put out later–8 other plants, 2 of each variety–are just as tall and big as far as leaves, vines, general foliage…but they are only flowering…not a single green tomato yet.

I’m not sure how they know, but apparently they know.  It must be related to the root system?  Or maybe they are counting the days?  If anyone has a theory, let me hear it.

By fall all of these opinions will have probably changed, but as of today, here is what I would/will be doing differently with next year’s garden:

• Raise the two beds on lowest ground another 8 to 12 inches.
• Eliminate trying melons at all.  I set aside a lot of space for them and they don’t look good yet.
• Eliminate things we can’t eat, namely jackolanterns and decorative gourds.  The plants are doing well, but it does seem like wasted space.
• Twice as much broccoli, maybe even two full beds.  I thought I planted a lot, but it’s definitely not going to be enough to freeze any.
• Twice as many bush green beans, again maybe even two full beds.
• One whole area of lettuce planted really close together, that I would intend to harvest as leaf lettuce in May and early June.  I’m tired of waiting for lettuce heads to grow…I want salad!  Perhaps 9 or 12 plants per square foot.

I have five full-size 8×6 ft. beds and one that is smaller where the fence cuts it off diagonally.  If I were to do it right now I guess I would plant 2009 as:

• Two beds of broccoli
• One and a half beds of green beans
• Half a bed of salad stuff (it’s still 24 square feet)
• One bed to grow peppers, cucumbers and zucchini
• One full bed of tomatoes

That eliminates cauliflower, some cabbage, peas, melons, gourds and probably a couple other things but hopefully puts more food in my belly.  I guess we’ll see what I think later on down the line.

==============

EDIT (June 10):

You know…my first-in broccoli has all just about finished up already.  It was a disappointingly small harvest of broccoli, but maybe I’ll try a different seed next year.

However I’m havin’ a thought here.  Since the broccoli is going to be finished producing by the middle of June, I can plant 2 full beds of broccoli as early as possible, completely harvest them, empty the beds and then plant rows of green beans.  June 15 green beans will be done in mid- to late-August.  That should work!