Tag Archives: corn

How to protect your corn from wind in a square foot garden

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Today we’ve had wind gusts up to 30 MPH.  By tonight that might be as high as 50+ MPH.  One year my corn had gotten to be about 4 or 5 feet tall when one of these wind storms rolled through our neighborhood.  I returned home from work to find that all my corn was flattened.  It was laying on the ground completely destroyed.  All that hard work for nothing.  It was a real bummer!  At that time the corn was looking great-strong, healthy, etc.  I vowed to never let that happen again and came up with a way to do it.  Even though these aren’t as big as the ones blown over many years ago, some of them are big enough to still get pulled out of the ground because of corns shallow roots.  This shows you how to protect your corn in strong winds.  I’ve simply taken some posts(left over from an earlier experiment that didn’t work out-never throw anything away)and place one in each of the 4 corners.  I then put an additional post on the outside-middle.  Then I just stretched some left over nylon netting over the posts until tight.  The wind will still blow the corn, but it can’t blow it over.  As the corn grows higher, I will put another horizontal piece of nylon netting about 3 1/2 feet from the ground.  That way, I have a good, strong anchor to keep all the corn in place no matter how hard the wind may blow.  There have been times when we’ve had winds in excess of 70 MPH.  When I grew corn during one of those years, it came through the wind storm with no damage at all.  I went on to harvest 70+ ears of corn out of this little 4X4′ square foot garden box.[ois skin=”below post”]

 

Time to get your square foot gardens ready for summer..

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now you should start to really pack your garden. I’ve been planting corn at 5 day intervals. That way you don’t get all your corn at once. And it will still be big enough to cross-pollinate. Corn is planted 4 per square. This year I did a little mix-n-match with the 3 sisters-squash, corn, and pole beans. It’s an old Indian tradition. I’ve got a nice little write-up on the 3 sisters that can be accessed with a bronze membership or above. I didn’t do the full out 3 sisters though. I have my regular pole beans planted-4 squares across(that’s 32 seeds). The next 4 rows will be my spring treat corn. Then I have another 4 squares planted with butternut squash. In theory the pole beans are supposed to climb up the corn stalks. But our corn is not big enough, early enough to keep up with the pole beans. If I wanted to do it right I should have started my corn 2 or 3 weeks earlier. That’s difficult to do in northern Utah. Then you get the pollinators-bees, working on the squash and beans. What I’ve really got is corn that’s sandwiched between pole beans and squash. That’s my square foot version of the 3 sisters. Tomato plants should be in, along with peppers and all your herbs. Make sure you leave squares available for garlic, shallots and onions. These work at keeping pests at bay. Think about where you’re putting your basil and remember that this goes very well next to tomatoes. Plant your melons, cucumbers and squashes-but keep them separated. The last thing you want is your cantaloupe having a strange cucumber taste. Potatoes should be in, along with some carrots. What’s left? Whatever your family eats. For us, that includes beets, carrots, and all sorts of lettuce. Because your gardens are so small, you can protect it from higher temperatures with shade cloth. Lettuce is hard to germinate when it gets into the mid-80’s. But if you cover it and give it some extra water, you’ll be able to have salad greens all summer long-there’s nothing worse than having all those great tasting tomatoes if you don’t have any lettuce to enjoy them with….[ois skin=”below post”]