I don't think it's going to freeze any more this year in Salt Lake

[JayE]

Looking at the weather forecast, there are no freezing nights in the next week, so I'm taking my chances. I already planted the potatoes and I'm ready to plant the corn on Monday.

[Earthling]

ahhhh! It is going to freeze tonight at my house 30 miles north of you. I wouldn't trust it - this coming week has colder temps and it just snowed a little higher than us yesterday.

Anyway - put those tomatoes in walls of water. just saying . . . also check your ground temp because it has to be warm for corn to grow. I replanted 3x last year because the corn rotted in cold ground. Hope these tips help.

[cHeroKee]

Jay, The soil temp is still too cold for the germination of corn seeds. You may want to wait till the end of May before you plant your corn. This will ensure a higher germination rate.
Looking at the weather forecast, there are no freezing nights in the next week, so I'm taking my chances. I already planted the potatoes and I'm ready to plant the corn on Monday.

[Earthling]

Last year I took all my gardening info from my classes, handouts, extension service, etc and compiled them into a list for easy reference. Here is the info I put together on corn. I hope it is helpful.

Corn -
- Soak seeds overnight before planting.
- Plant 1 ½ to 2 ½ inches deep – 3-6” apart, rows 2-3 feet apart.
- Joy of Gardening: plant 3-4 rows side-by-side, seeds 10” apart, 1” deep in 4” deep furrow. Fill in the furrow as it grows. Hill when 6-8” high and again at 1 foot high.
- Plant in blocks so they pollinate well (wind pollinated)
- Corn planted too closely will produce small ears. Needs good spacing for sunlight.
- Sow about May 15th, end of May & mid June (about every 2 weeks for long season)
- Earlier varieties are shorter with smaller ears (60-80 day). Later varieties are 80-100+ days.
- Rotate planting location.
- Do not plant until soil temperature is 65-70 degrees. At 50 degrees they are prone to rot.
- Corn seeds are sensitive to cold, wet conditions during first 24-48 hours after planting.
- Germinates in 6-10 days
- Separate varieties to preserve characteristics of each variety (so doesn’t cross-pollinate)
- High nitrogen and phosphorus user.
Give nitrogen when plant, when 8” high, & when tassle with ½ cup for every 20’ row.
Joy of Gardening: fertilize 1 tbsp per plant when knee high and when tassles/silk form.
- Do not remove suckers, they often produce ears
- Irrigation: corn stresses easier than most crops, uses a lot of water, needs a quart per day.
When needs water the leaves go grey & will stand up. Increase water during silking & kernel
growth.
- Generally ripens 22-24 days after silking
- Leave several rows empty in the middle for shade loving plants like peas, cabbage, broccoli & lettuce.
- Pick in the morning or evening when silks have turned brown and dry, and the ears feel firm.
- Cook & eat as soon as possible after picking as the sugars start to turn to starch.

[JayE]

I should have mentioned that I planted my corn in little planters a couple of weeks ago. I've been putting them out during the day and keeping them inside at night. They all sprouted fine and are now about 4" high. KSL's forecast says that, after tonight the overnight lows will be around 50 or above from now on. Don't you think those 4" plants would be fine planted tomorrow?

[JuneGem]

I'm in Arkansas, so definitely warmer here. Some of my potato plants are just starting to develop buds. My mouth just waters when I think about the first new potatoes!

[phylm]

I should have mentioned that I planted my corn in little planters a couple of weeks ago. I've been putting them out during the day and keeping them inside at night. They all sprouted fine and are now about 4" high. KSL's forecast says that, after tonight the overnight lows will be around 50 or above from now on. Don't you think those 4" plants would be fine planted tomorrow?

Yep, should be okay. good luck.

At our combined Pr/RS ward conference meeting on Sunday, the stake president had shown us an Elder Hales' talk on preparation (in which he stated that we are in hard times with harder times coming), and then the president went over the 6 parts of preparedness. In mentioning self-sustaining living, he touched lightly on storage and gardening. It was a very good presentation for the limited time that he had. I raised my hand just before he closed. I said:

"I would like to make 2 points. One, learn to garden now before your life depends on it. We're in Florida, so there's no reason why we can't eat out of our gardens all winter. The -------s (member family) do, and we do. Two, store a lot more water than you have been counseled to do. If we should lose electric service indefinitely, and if you can't access your deep well water, or if you don't know how to purify ditch water or rain off your roof, you'll die of thirst long before you die of starvation.

I went up to speak to him afterward, and told him about the pool shock method of water purifying. He and his family are gardening in earnest this year, and we discussed that. While we were chatting, a brother who is one of our Home Teaching members came up to tell me that he wants some advice from us about what to plant after his spring garden is done.

Told him we would. Unfortunately, he is just now planting his spring garden, while we're almost ready to start some second planting: peanuts, and beets and carrots between the corn rows. I think he'll do better next year.

We'll be eating sweet corn next week. The sweet onions--all 500 plants--are 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter now. Hubby is planning to pull the pea plants in a few days, and we'll have to take out some of the swiss chard plants, because we have more than 80 jars canned, and can't keep up with them with just fresh eating. Will can a couple more growths of spinach before pulling that.

Thornless blackberries are in full bloom, and should have a good offering for U-pic by mid-May. Have 22 ninety foot rows of sweet corn to sell, also, about half of it tasseling now. Blueberries are still very short, but have a remarkable number of berries ripening. Hubby got them all covered with tulle today. We're going to have some very disappointed mocking birds! They've been keeping a close eye on them lately.

[Noahs ARK]

"I would like to make 2 points. One, learn to garden now before your life depends on it. We're in Florida, so there's no reason why we can't eat out of our gardens all winter. The -------s (member family) do, and we do. Two, store a lot more water than you have been counseled to do. If we should lose electric service indefinitely, and if you can't access your deep well water, or if you don't know how to purify ditch water or rain off your roof, you'll die of thirst long before you die of starvation.

Water is what I'm focusing on this year.

I worry that if there's no rain or only contaminated water...how much extra water will we need for our gardens?

Phylm - where do you get your energy? Every night I think I had a productive day and then I read one of your posts... *thud*

[phylm]

Water is what I'm focusing on this year.

I worry that if there's no rain or only contaminated water...how much extra water will we need for our gardens?

Phylm - where do you get your energy? Every night I think I had a productive day and then I read one of your posts... *thud*

The unpurified water would be fine for watering plants, assuming that the contamination is birdy doo off the roof.

I can only tell what I have in mind for watering garden in a Schumer situation. We have many young Hispanic dairy farm workers in our neighborhood, some of them young families, who, I'm sure, would be hard put to scrape up a 72 hour kit. In the short term, my husband could improvise a windlass to use with our Lehman's "well bucket", which they could operate to keep the water coming up, 1.9 gallons at a time. He's also thinking of a system of wooden troughs to carry the water to the garden. I'm trying to budget for a solar system with enough wattage to run just the deep water well pump. that would be a great blessing.

We're quietly talking with our neighbors, hoping to be organized in case the worst happens. They're native Floridians, for the most part, and, among us all, we have quite a range of skills, including mechanical, building, gardening, hunting, fishing, farming and first aid skills. Some have cattle, chickens, goats, and pigs already, and I'm sure a number of us are well-acquainted with butchering, smoking meat, and rendering lard.

Amazingly, most of them don't garden, claiming that the deer eat everything. We added another 5 feet of height to our original 5 foot fence, and now have no problem with deer. I do want to get a female burro when we add our small livestock and poultry. I think coyotes and bobcats could find a way into any fence.

Don't give me too much credit for our accomplishments. My husband is the Eveready Bunny, in spite of the fact that he has chronic fatigue sydrome, and turns into a pumpkin at 8 p.m. I was the gardener, food forager, food canner, freezer and dehydrator for more than fifty years, while he was a dairy farmer, so I can usually answer any questions he has about gardening. He asks me to come out and supervise pruning, because I'm much more ruthless about cutting things back where they belong, and I nearly make him cry while he does it. He can't milk a barnful of cows anymore, so he works from dawn to dark on this little place. I told him that when we retired, my time was going to be put into my writing. I try to work in some time for that.

Back to water. Eaves troughs are a necessity, and having several catch barrels would be useful.

If anyone would like a list of useful prep tips, please IM me with your email address, and I'd be happy to send it to you. I'm preparing to send it to a long list of my former prep class members, family, and now my newer ward members.

[thomasusa]

Last year I took all my gardening info from my classes, handouts, extension service, etc and compiled them into a list for easy reference. Here is the info I put together on corn. I hope it is helpful.

Corn - ....

My wife ritualistically plants the corn too early to try to force summer to come.
This summery of corn planting is more than I've ever heard before.
Please - I would like to see all your compiled easy references.





The unpurified water ...

If anyone would like a list of useful prep tips, please IM me with your email address, and I'd be happy to send it to you. I'm preparing to send it to a long list of my former prep class members, family, and now my newer ward members.

I'll take any good ideas I can get, thanks.

[JuneGem]

I'm trying to budget for a solar system with enough wattage to run just the deep water well pump.

Phylm, do you have a particular one in mind? I would love to do the same with ours.

[JayE]

It looks like I gambled and won. I'm pretty sure now that it will not freeze again until next fall. Our corn is doing quite well and is about 5" to 6" tall now. Our potatoes are all up too. Tomorrow I'll plant the beans and tomatoes.

The corn is in 3 stages. We don't want all of it to get ripe at once, so it is staggered in 3 different plantings. The 1st planting is 5" to 6" tall, while the 2nd is barely sprouted, and the 3rd is not yet planted.

[LEVE]

Lucky you, it was 23°F last night, 28°F the night before... but then, I'm 1000 miles north and west of Happy Valley.

[Earthling]

It froze last night . . . right after I planted my tomatoes . . . but I had them all covered up and tucked in tight. I am hoping the ground temp is high enough to plant my corn in the next few days. I am at about 5000 ft in elevation.

[cHeroKee]

It froze last night . . . right after I planted my tomatoes . . . but I had them all covered up and tucked in tight. I am hoping the ground temp is high enough to plant my corn in the next few days. I am at about 5000 ft in elevation.

Still too cold to plant corn. Need to wait till the end of May.

[NoGreaterLove]

Still too cold to plant corn. Need to wait till the end of May.
Our corn is already growing as of a few weeks ago

[Gennut]

This spring is sure a lot better than last when we couldn't plant anything until the end of May because of the rain and cold.

But now our tomatoes are growing so fast you can almost watch them. Some are almost 2 ft. tall and all have blossoms on them. We planted them out toward the end of April, took a chance and they weathered the few cold nights.

Peas are about a foot high and blossoming.

Planted onions very early and they are well established, spinach is about to the "baby" stage.

Planted lettuce in our small greenhouse and it is growing so fast we can't keep up with it. the radishes planted in Feb are all finished.

Cucumbers, cantalope and watermelon plants are thriving.

We have installed some auto watering pipe stuff, plus used black plastic to keep the weeds away.

Low maintenance is what we are all about given our low energy level at times. :001_07:

[prairiemom]

So :thumbup1: to hear how well your gardens are doing. I have a friend here in ND who planted his tomatoes over a month ago and protected them with Wall-o-Water. They came through 4 nights of frost with flying colors.

I've got all my veggie plants in about 3 wks earlier than normal, but I've been so busy with our property tax campaign that I haven't been able to plant the rest like I want (In fact 1/2 of it isn't even rototilled.)

But between the asparagus (25 lbs so far) and volunteer lettuce, we've been enjoying the vegetables of spring.

[Earthling]

My garden got put in late this year since I had to wait for all the compost to be added and then have it rototilled when the ground was dry enough. BUT - it is looking good now.

I read an idea to put roofing tar paper around the cages to add heat and keep out the cold . . . so I did that with some leftover we had and it worked well. I took them off when the temps hit 80 but need to put them back as it has chilled down again. It might freeze tonight.

[arbilad]

The last frost date has passed where I live so everything goes in the ground now, and I get to set up my watering system on a timer now.
I'm hoping to have a better crop of corn this year. More than that, I'm hoping to get a good crop of pumpkins. My six year old is planting a giant pumpkin. Let's hope that does well.

[Earthling]

We got a surprise freeze Friday night but we had bundled the garden up so everything made it.

[Earthling]

Checking the National Weather Service - we have several nights of freezing weather this week where I live.

If your garden is doing well Jay with these temp swings - then consider yourself very lucky/blessed!!!

[JayE]

Checking the National Weather Service - we have several nights of freezing weather this week where I live.

If your garden is doing well Jay with these temp swings - then consider yourself very lucky/blessed!!!

It has not frozen here in weeks. Our garden is doing great.

[Earthling]

It has not frozen here in weeks. Our garden is doing great.

awesome! Count your blessings on that one. I live against the mountain and get a cold draft off of it - 5000 ft. It has a microclimate that is different than even a mile away. It means I can't grow watermelon & cantelope but everything else does ok.

[arbilad]

I finally got the watering system going in my garden today. It's quiet a feeling of accomplishment. I had to use a lot of irrigation tape because the connections between hoses are inclined to leak. Some of them would leak a lot without the tape.
Anyway, in the arid Colorado environment it will be a relief not to have to drive to the community garden every day to water it.
We're going to have to kill bugs in our garden, though, because they really like the sprouting corn.
We found with our soaker hoses that we can't have them in one long line, because the plants at the end get practically no water while the plants at the beginning of the hose get swamped. So we have a garden hose that runs to a splitter, and then two (soon to be three) soaker hose lines leading off the splitter. That way no single soaker hose line is too long, and the plants along the hoses get about the same amount of water.

[Earthling]

Well after another week of freezes at night . . . I am happy to say my plants have made it (after being covered every night) and the forecast is for warmer temps at night. yea!!

[prairiemom]

We had frost last night. :blink: Which sort of proves my thesis: there really is no such thing as an early spring.