Yes, I borrowed the idea for this piece from John Birmingham’s recently updated cheeseburgergothic.substack.com. In his blurb he talks about how a bunch of people he knows have planted various veggies; how this seems to be a trend for 2020.

I’ve observed this over here, as well. Think it comes from a lot of people’s desire to cut back on trips to the store, this is fully understandable. Who wants to wander the aisles looking for stuff when some old guy is standing there hacking his lungs out?

Not me. We’ve been ordering our groceries online and picking them up, WalMart has been really good about this. Amazing how the disease has changed everything, really, and usually not in a good way.

The photo above was taken at the end of June, it’s the southern side of my house. Well, since then the corn has gone nuts. Observe.

Some stalks are an easy ten foot high, the Indian corn seems to grow much taller than the sweet corn varieties. It’s already earing up, I’ll probably pick an ear or two today and see how it’s doing. This variety (I think it’s called Indian Dent corn) is good to eat on the cob if you catch it young, otherwise it’s fine as corn meal, or heaven forfend, parched.

But we haven’t just grown corn, although there’s plenty of that.

Our garden isn’t a lot bigger than most years, and it’s meant to supplement trips to the store as opposed to replacing them. For true self-sufficiency you’d need a lot more land under cultivation than our little patch, but I figure every little bit helps.

We have done nicely with zucchini, crookneck squash, cukes, melons, etc., and the beans, tomatoes and pumpkins are coming on nicely.

As usual, we have messed with cabbage and broccoli with little success. Beets, too. The verdict is still out, but I don’t hold a lot of hope.

So yeah, our garden is pretty OK.

But it still won’t keep the zombies at bay. For that you need more land, watchtowers and concertina wire.

Killer attack roosters wouldn’t hurt, either.

In any case, stay safe out there. It’s been a wild year that shows no sign of letting up.

J.