A week of weather and planting

Weather is always important, but this week it has been overwhelming.

The storms on Monday and Wednesday with their rain, wind and hail did much damage around East Tennessee. Fortunately, the farm was spared most of this. We had hail on Wednesday and then lost power for 24 hours. But things in the garden were big enough to be too affect by any of these things.

Our situation, of course, pales in comparison to that of our former hometown of Tusclaoosa, where the pictures and video have been surreal. Tornadoes are nature's most powerful concentrated form, and the one that swept through Tuscaloosa and central Alabama was nature at its worst.

Our many friends in Tuscaloosa are, for the most part, in good shape, suffering only the inconvenience of power outages and the like. Still, everyone in that city is facing massive disruption and clean-up efforts that will take a very long time. Our hearts go out to them.

Planting

The garden is finally in.

While there are spots here and there that need to be filled in, all of the rows have been planted. We put in white corn, peppers, tomatoes and sunflowers yesterday to complete the set. Here's how things line up:

Row 6 (east to west): Yukon Gold; mixture
Row 7: Red Gold; Russian banana (fingerlings)
Row 8: Russian bananas
Row 9: French fingerlings
Row 10: Peanut fingerlings
Row 11: Onions
Row 12: Okra
Row 13: Peppers; sunflowers; pumpkins
Row 14: Tomatoes (Early Girl, German Queen, Sweet 100s); cucumbers
Row 15: White corn
Row 16: White corn
Row 17: Snow Peas
Row 18: Beans | Peas
Row 19: Beans | Peas
Row 20: Yellow corn
Row 21: Yellow corn
Row 22: Yellow corn
Row 23: Yellow corn
Row 24: Peanuts

The corn is coming up nicely, and the potatoes are beginning stand up after the battering by the hail. Weeding is the next order of business.

Weeding is always the next order of business.

Bees

We acquired one more beehive yesterday. It was a nuc hive I purchased from a friend in the beekeepers association. Peter wants to give Vera a third hive for her birthday, and I said I would try to put one together for her. So this is it.

I think John and I will be up for a beehive inspection today.