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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission

The weather this spring has made gardening difficult for sure.

I’ve had to seed my cucumber row three times. Original planting I used leftover seed - zero germination. 2nd planting was silted over with ~3” of dirt during a deluge - ~25% of that attempt made it out of the ground. I re-seeded the skips then got another big rain. Now I’m waiting to see if any of those come up.

By next season I should have enough raised beds built to plant bush beans in one or two of them. In the meantime I’m going to re-seed the pole beans and build a temporary fence from chicken wire around that row in hopes of keeping the bunnies from mowing them down again.

If we get some sun and wind today the ground might be dry enough to run the walk-behind tiller over the spot where I’m going to put my sweet corn. It would be nice to get that in the ground before it rains again. Weather guessers are guessing that might happen on Wednesday. I’m hoping they’re guessing wrong on that.


381 posted on 06/16/2025 9:00:15 AM PDT by Augie
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To: Augie

Heard the comment from 4-5 guys at work today; More rain or More [fill in the blank] rain

Wish I had my gutters and IBC tanks set up for the tunnel. They’d be full all the time. I’ll get it done asap and that will make the rain stop, I guarantee.


385 posted on 06/16/2025 4:43:40 PM PDT by Pollard (this post has been reduced by 40% of it's original size to save your reading eyes)
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To: Augie
Even though my tunnel is just the roof right now, it did prevent rushing water and pounding rain issues and we've had so much rain, it hardly ever dried out. Sooner or later, I'll be trying to keep up with watering under it.

Old Iowa U article says cucumber seeds are good for 5 years.

Seed Saving Handbook by Jack Rowe says up to 10 years

I've got some bean seeds that were packed for 2020 that I probably need to ditch. Beans I planted last week are also 2020 so I'll see about those soon. Everything else I planted last week melon/squash were 2022 and should be fine. Several years ago, I tossed some grocery store white beans out in the yard that were long term food storage but were 10+ years old. Half of them sprouted just sitting on top of moist dirt.

The beans I planted are bush type but I have a few types of pole beans, also for 2020. Hate just throwing them away. Might stick a few of those in the ground and if they come up, drop some baling twine from the tunnel frame and let them climb that.

409 posted on 06/18/2025 7:30:39 AM PDT by Pollard (What's that bright thing in the sky?)
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