Tag Archives: corn

Planning your square foot garden

braising greens: red and green mustard, hon sai tai, kale, and tatsBeing deep into the spring months, it’s time to now focus on what and when to plant for your summer garden. Choosing to not worry about wide swings in weather in certain locations leads some people to only have a summer/early fall garden. There’s certainly merit to that thinking. In the next several weeks the weather in our zone will start to really heat up. By then many will be done with all the tradition cool spring crops-spinach, lettuce, varieties of Asian greens, swiss chard, mizuna, etc.<br><br>
What to plant for summer? The first thing you’ll need to think about is the space needed for vertical gardening. In the square foot gardening system all vining crops are grown up on a trellis made out of 1/2″ electrical conduit. It’s virtually indestructible and will last a long time. This means crops like indeterminate tomatoes, squashes, pole beans, and melons will be growing up, not out. This method is highly efficient. By keeping your crops off the ground you minimize the damage by certain garden pests but also give your plants better air-circulation and exposure to the sun.

By knowing the food needs of your household you can plan for the quantities of each crop. Cherry tomato plants can bring 10-12 pounds of fruit throughout the growing season. Can you use that much? Can you use more? If so, how much more? Lets say your family will consume in the area of 35-40 pounds of cherry tomatoes this summer. That means you’ll plant 4 cherry tomatoes using just 4 square feet. And yes, you only need 1 square foot to grow a tomato plant that will be 7-8 feet tall by the end of summer. Just make sure you’re growing indeterminate plants, not determinant and keep those “suckers’ pinched back. You’ll do this for all your vining crops.

Along with these items you’ll need to plan all the other things you want to grow. Beets, carrots, beans, certain types of lettuce, basil, etc. Once you’ve figured that out you’ll arrive at the number of squares needed for this summer. If you’ve planned it out and find that you don’t have enough squares, you need more square foot garden boxes. If you’ve got a lot of squares left over, you’re garden is too big. We like to minimize the size of our gardens in the SFG system. We grow only what we need and what we love to eat. Our goal is to have each family member enjoy a fresh, just harvested salad every night of the growing season and nothing more. This eliminates the all-at-once harvest that’s come to be associated from most home gardens.

I’m beginning to empty out squares that have previously been filled with spring crops. I’ve got transplants of certain things ready to go right now. A typical summer garden for me might include the following: zucchini, bush beans, pole beans, cherry tomatoes, many squares of selected lettuce varieties, basil, peppers, spaghetti squash, green onions, carrots, swiss chard, and cucumbers. That will be the content of a single 4X4′ box. In another box I’ll have lettuce, melons, banana squash, New Zealand spinach, kohlrabi, pole beans, beets, and a transplanted rosemary plant. And what about corn? In my mind corn is a huge nitrogen and space hog. It takes up valuable space for too long and it’s dirt cheap in the summer. For those reasons I’ll let the farmers take care of the corn[ois skin=”1”]

Corn in the square foot garden

corn-on deck ear

I’ve grown corn in our gardens many times in the past.  There are some things I like about it and some things I don’t.  I don’t like the fact that it takes up so much room for so long.  And it’s so cheap in the summer I always ask myself why I even attempt it.  Last winter Burpee’s came out with this “container” corn that I wanted to try.  Instead of taking up valuable squares in the garden, I could now plant this in a large container.  Well, I did, and it was great.  Easy and very sweet corn.  I had some extra seeds so I stuck them in the garden to see if they would grow and they did.  This is “On-Deck” corn-a sweet SH2 variety that you might consider for next year.  Burpee’s claims you’ll get 2 or 3 ears per stalk.  I’ve gotten one per stalk so far, and the one’s I’ve pulled have been excellent.  The things I like about growing corn yourself is that just picked fresh, sweet taste.  The other thing I like about it is that I can use the stalks for fall decorations in the garden and then they become “brown” compost material that I shred.  The taste of this corn was excellent.  The stalks didn’t get overly tall, and I was able to easily grow 4 stalks per square.

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Fall planting schedule-what, when, and how?

cross view of covered garden in summerOne of the best ways I’ve seen in figuring out what to grow, when to start it, and what to plant is the crop scheduler from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Besides having the best things on the planet(personal view), they are outstanding at support. Just plug in your average first frost date and you’ll see when you should start, what you should start, and how to do it-either with transplants or direct seeding. You can read all about it here.  You’ll see the planting calendar on the right hand side of the page.  By planting the right crops for the right season you eliminate a lot of headaches-like trying to grow tomatoes in weather that’s too cold.  Or spinach in the summer.  Cold weather and frost isn’t too far away-it’s time to start planning if you want a great fall garden and harvest.  I’ve still got plenty of lettuce(in terribly warm weather)coming on, along with chard, tomatoes, peppers,  zucchini, squashes, carrots, basil, parsely, chives, corn, and beets among other things.  All of these-with the exception of lettuce-love the warm weather.  I’ve had to do some extra work with the lettuce to keep it from tasting bitter(more on that the next post), and going to seed, but it’s easy work.  I’ve got some fall square foot garden classes to teach coming up in the next few weeks in order to help others get ready for the fall season.  I hope you can experience the success and the taste of a fresh brussel sprout pulled right off the stem-along with all the other great fall crops.

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The corn is starting to produce in the square foot gardens

That’s our great daughter who went out to find some corn in the garden.  Things are growing well back there-including the spring treat corn.  I planted 4 seeds per square and we’ve been able to harvest about 12 ears of corn over the course of a few days.  This works out perfectly because I planted a row of 4 squares about every 5th day so we get things that come in smaller, shorter waves.  The corn is good, but I think I’ll go for the sweeter variety next year that produces a bigger ear of corn.  These ears are only 7-81/2 long.  They taste very good, but we just want bigger.  I’ve had no problems in my corn with bugs or anything else.  There’s tons of bees back there doing their thing, along with their presence on squash plants, sunflowers, and bachelor buttons.  I forgot that bachelor buttons were pollinators so that worked out pretty well.  Tonight we grabbed some ears of corn along with a zucchini(grown in 1 square foot)and 2 carrots.  We steamed the corn and sauteed the carrots and zucchini and was it ever good.  This is summertime-my most favorite time for eating.  All fresh and all just harvested within just a few minutes, and boy can you ever tell.  There have been no pole beans yet but those should be coming up very shortly.  This square foot garden stuff-it’s just the best.[ois skin=”below post”]

A look at corn in a square foot garden

I haven’t grown corn in a few years only because it takes up an entire 4X4′ box and it’s pretty cheap during the summer months.  The first year I grew corn I had over 100 ears in this same box.  While it’s true the second ears were a bit smaller it was still a lot of corn grown in a very small area.  This has a while to go, but I’m beginning to see some tasseling.  You’ll also notice the different sizes of stalks.  I planted 4 squares of corn every 5 days to avoid the all-at-once harvest.  This particular variety is Spring Treat-available everywhere.  I picked this variety because of it’s shorter time to harvest, its ability to germinate in cooler temperatures, the shorter stalk, and the sweetness of the corn.  It’s been planted 4 per square.  Given the right conditions, this should produce at least 64 heads of corn.  That’s only counting 1 corn per stalk, and I think I’ll get more than that.  This was also a weaker attempt at the 3 sisters method.  I will do this again next year, but I’ll be sure to do it correctly.  You can see the butternut squash beginning to grow in front, and the pole beans beginning to climb the tower in the back.  I’ll have a post on the 3 sisters later, but it should have been done differently.  In theory, this isn’t the 3 sisters method at all.  I had already begun growing my pole beans before I had put corn in as closely as it needs to be.  Pole beans in the back, corn in the middle, and butternut squash in the front.  What you can’t see as easily in this picture is more squash-which I will not grow vertically-and bush beans scattered among the corn.  This will add the needed (hopefully)nitrogen that corn requires.  It’s my idea of a middle ground technique for the 3 sisters method given the fact that I didn’t start out planning it correctly.  But it will produce a lot of goodies for us by the time it’s all done.  Total square footage used for this project of at least 64 ears of corn, a summers load of pole beans, a harvest of butternut squash, and a summers growth of bush beans: 24.[ois skin=”below post”]