Patti Moreno: Hi, I’m Patti Moreno the garden girl.
Mel Bartholomew: And I’m Mel Bartholomew in square foot gardening.
Patti Moreno: This month its July and things are growing beautifully in our garden.
Mel Bartholomew: Yes, it’s gorgeous.
Patti Moreno: One of the things that I’m always so sad about every July is that my lettuce is gone. I can’t seem to grow it in July but you’ve got some really good tips on keeping that lettuce in there.
Mel Bartholomew: I think we can make you happy. Well lettuce is traditionally a cool weathered crop and you’re not supposed to be able to grow in the summer, you have to wait until fall and grow another crop in the fall. What we do with lettuce is first of all, the hot sun, the hot temperatures, how can we cool it down? Well you put it in shade and so we put a little support up and put shade crop over the top. The sun didn’t beat down on the plants directly and they weren’t quite as hot. We gave it lots of extra water. We mulched and we even had a little spritzer there and by golly that stuff lasted right through the summer. Even broccoli kept growing and forming heads, right through the summer. It’s just like putting a person out there under the sun and you give them a shade; the extra water and they could stand there for a long time doing that.
So that’s—you try that. Now the other way of course is to get heat resistant plants. Now they do breed lettuces and many of the plants for either can stand the cold weather or the warm weather and so in this case you want to get some lettuce varieties that say are heat tolerant or summer tolerant and they won’t bolt the seed as fast.
Patti Moreno: Excellent, well July is also a really fun time in my garden because my corn. My corn is starting to come up and growing and its getting bigger. What are the things about corn, growing corn here is its kind of an identifier to my house where if somebody has never been to my house and they are looking for it, and they are coming to visit. They see the corn stalks and they know instantly it’s my house.
Mel Bartholomew: Oh and right here in the middle of the city too.
Patti Moreno: Right here in the middle of the city and I love having fresh corn. My family loves it, so give us some tips on how to grow it efficiently.
Mel Bartholomew: Well, traditionally corn is grown in single rows, spaced three feet apart. That’s all in farms that way, been that way since the caveman I think. Corn pollinates when corn comes up. The stalk goes all the way to the top and then there are tussles there. Now that’s the male pollen is in those tussles and when the wind blows and the corn shakes or moves they fall down. Now if the wind is blowing they fall this way, now if you plant corn in a single row and the pollen falls this way and the ear with the silk is over here doesn’t get pollinated. And that sometimes when you get it here corn and there are missing kernels in it because the interesting thing is that the pollen comes into the silk and there is one strand of silk for every kernel that goes inside and into a kernel. If it doesn’t get pollinated that kernel won’t fill out right but that shows you the best way to plant corn is not in single rows in a home garden, it’s in a square.
Well there is square for gardening steps that says I can handle that. So in a four foot by four foot, we’ll grow nothing but corn. A couple of reasons, one is we don’t want to shade other plants. The other is how much corn do you want? Quite a bit and why not grow a lot?
Patti Moreno: I cant wait to start eating my corn. I actually have come to just eat it raw. Just pop it up, I just eat it raw. One quick thing before we wrap this up, when do you know when to harvest your corn?
Mel Bartholomew: Well you kind of feel it and when its lumpy you know the kernels have filled out and the silks starts to turn brown and that also tells you that its kind of finished. And the best way if your not sure is you strip off just a little piece of the husk down and you put your fingernail in to the kernel and if it spits back at you, it’s very milky, it’s good and fresh, and it’s ready to harvest.
Patti Moreno: Thank you so much, we are done with July but August is coming right up and—
Mel Bartholomew: We’re going to plant our fall crop in August in the middle of summer so make sure you tune in next month. Happy gardening.
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