Kakahead

April showers bring Mayflowers, the old song says. I guess that means the Pilgrims came over to Plymouth Rock during a rain storm. But it isn’t April anymore, and we’re still having showers. This is a good thing.

My friends will cry, “this stinking rain!! I wish the sun was out so my epidermal molecules be injured by ultraviolet radiation and we could enjoy larger temperatures!! And now the pollen is removing the nose linings of my face from repeated sniffle-sniffle! Oh flarn, what an onerous life event I am experiencing from this weather pattern!”

Well, maybe that don’t quite say THAT, but the rain hasn’t exactly been welcome lately. Some folks are getting tons of rain, we are getting just enough.  So we want more, they want less.  However, the rain is bringing with it a miracle: the plants are exploding. You can hear it all night long, the bigness is so loud. Leaves popping out of the tree buds like a dog with a new model airplane! The pure spontaneity of it makes me cringe as I pass normally innocent trees and bulbs; and they go “BOOM!” with new growth. Growth noise! Very wonderful.

That’s what summer brings in Michigan. And the rain is the culprit here. Rain as opposed to snow, you see. The snow causes plants to go to bed, and have dreams for many months. Now they are all awake, and the plants are holding hands, rendering amorous floral displays, and getting ready to have babies. People are orchestrating this, too, with their trips to the garden store. There they can adopt the seedy offspring of many varieties. Of course, the humans are completely insidious in their intent, because we all know what’s going to happen to the seed babies, now don’t we??

Sure! The people giants are going to take the plant  baby seeds and stuff them in their dirt cribs. Next comes the water, then maybe some compost flavored organic soup for din-din. This is all a plot (or is it all IN a plot?) to raise unsuspecting babies into mature adults so we can bite them and mush their bodies into pulp for our tummies. It frightens them badly, you know. Whenever I say to my kids, “eat your veggies,” all the produce tries to make a break for it. We keep the doors closed. Ha ha on them!

I have to admit, I get much pleasure out of raising the young of other plants for my own whimsical eating enjoyment.  We have a big enough garden to grow a little of everything,  but it’s not really huge enough to grow much corn. So, we  grow enough for a few dozen ears. Time and trial has taught me a few lessons on growing corn successfully in a small area, you betcha by golly. Would you like to know the secret?

Ok, I’ll tell you anyway.

It’s kind of sick, so if there are any children in the room, send them to bed or something. We have to… um… HELP them. Help them… you know… do it. Pitch woo. Make hay. Um… parlez vous la humma-humma? Ok, WE HAVE TO AID THEM IN THEIR LOVE MAKING. Gack. But hey, I said it and I’m glad.

It’s like this, ok?? Corn is kinda funny because the male part of the plant is in its hair, and the female part is in the armpit. By this reasoning, since the female part is called the ear, that means a corn plant’s ears are in its armpits. Very strange. You see, corn pollinates by floof.  Pollen from the tassle floofs through the air and lands on the ear when it’s ovulating. Very primitive, but when the corn is planted in large fields and the rows are reasonably close together, this works out pretty well. However, in a small wannabe-farm-variety-type hobby not-so-serious garden dinky plot thing, with only two rows of corn, this is not so successful; even if you write about the lack of success in a run-on sentence with totally silly adjective and noun use.

So, you have to be the Dr. Ruth of the garden house.  Sure, you don’t absolutely HAVE to, but if you have a small garden and want corn, you may get ears with few or even NO kernels. You really have to know the right time, which is when the ears are just starting to grow silk out of their heads.  After the silk is out a bit, the tassles should be making these little pollen holders that flap about in the breeze and spread pollen for the floofing. You can tell the pollen is ready when you pull some of the holders off the tassle and they make yellowish floof powder on your fingers.

Now you are ready to help the corn have sex. OH JEEZ!  I SAID THE SEX THING!! Anyhow. Take the pollen holders and drop them on the silk of each ear. It is helpful to set up a VCR and TV in the garden while you are doing this. Rent one of those nice agricultural films that shows lots of flowers blooming and bees being. The ones that end with lots of grain graining are especially arousing to the corn plants.  Do this a few times, once a day if you can while the silk is new and the pollen is floofy.

This same love lesson can be applied to any veggie or other plant. Differences will of course be present depending on what type of flowers you are dealing with. Many plants have the male and female stuff all in one flower, and you can whisk them with an artist’s brush to get them to have babies.  Folks with apartments do this with very good success. They don’t usually invite bees in their house, so an artist’s brush is a good alternative. Some plants, like squash and melons, have male and female flowers. The females are the ones with the little baby fruit attached.  So, now you all know my innermost garden secrets. I am not ashamed of myself. I mean, you gotta do whatcha gotta  do. If you decide to try this, just be careful. No cross breeding. In other words, no eggpeppers or broccorn. No cantelumpkins or tomadishes. No zuccarrots. And absolutely NO suncumbers!!

We don’t want the National World Globe Star Enquirer interfering with our dinner, now do we??

Took a little while but I found an appropriately silly video for this week. Please watch as Red Green broadens our gardening horizon just a bit…