Planting Corn and Tomatoes in a Unique way!

On the previous episode I planted vines and berry bushes, on this episode I prepare and plant my corn and tomato patch.

With my L shaped piece of land almost ready, all I need to do is level it a bit before I start building my tomato trellis. This year I’m trying a new strategy that I saw Curtis Stone using in his garden in Kelowna. The idea is pretty simple, you bury your tomatoes really deep, removing the bottom branches of the tomato so they have a good strong base. You tie a rope across the top and than vertical ropes going down to each plant loosely wrapping them around the base burying the rope with the tomato. As the tomato grows make sure to keep it wrapped around the vertical rope and you’re all set.

My setup is quite simple, just 2 skinny boards measuring 7 feet long put about 1 foot into the ground. I used jute to tie from the board to the shed which I ended up doubling up for extra strength. The vertical lines are jute as well but I’d recommend using something more durable as I tied up my apple tree with jute and it eventually broke. Next year I’ll be getting some thin strong rope to do this with.

I planted the tomatoes in the middle of the bed, at the back are cucumbers and eventually peppers at the front. You can see I added some metal wiring beside the shed for the cucumbers to climb on as well as some deer fencing on the back.

Next up around this curved brick wall will be my corn. First it needs to be edged and weeded. A quick tip about weeding, if you have big weeds like I do and they are holding onto a lot of that excellent topsoil, give them a toss on your shovel a few times and most of it will come off the roots. After everything was cleaned up it’s time to put corn in the ground. The corn will be planted in 3 stages. First off here you can see I have tri color corn which is actually from a bag of popcorn. I sprouted it before planting and was curious to see if it would grow. I should note even with a successful crop of this corn it won’t be very sweet tasting as popcorn corn is a very starchy variety. Speaking from experience as a time traveller in the future, this popcorn only grew for a bit before all dying. I ended up putting some corn starter plants and 2 packages of corn from seed in the ground but you’ll have to stick around and subscribe to see that.

Music: Blue Wednesday
https://soundcloud.com/bluewednesday

#corn #tomatos #gardening