I don’t think I have ever experienced a summer in Alberta when, by the 20th of August, we still have not experienced a 30° day. It’s been cool and wet. And frankly, I’m ok with that. 23° is warm enough for me. But I wasn’t sure my garden would agree. I thought for sure with all this cool, wet weather, my plants would stop growing and start rotting. And indeed, when I picked my beans last week, there were lots of pods that were just rotting away on the plant. But in spite of that, I still picked a bumper crop of beans. And my peas have done better this year than they have since I moved here. And the corn! Well, let me just show you the corn…
And it’s only the 20th of August! So needless to say, I’m impressed. And excited. We’re going to be having some major corn roasts this fall!
So what’s been your experience with all this wet, cool weather (if you’re in Alberta)? Has it been a good year?
7 replies on “The Corn Likes the Weather…”
Nice crop of corn!. Our urban Edmonton garden has been struggling, with all the rain and then so dry. Beautiful tomatoes this year, we are enjoying them now. Thanks for your blog.
We grow flowers but next year want to try raised beds for veggies! The weather in Red Deer was sooooo disappointing! The hail shredded my hosta.
Is that Pole beans I see wrapped around the corn? What else do you supplementally grow around the corn?
JR: Yup – pole beans. Corn & beans are my usual combo.
I planted my corn in the ground pretty late and it only got to be about half your size (though I’m not sure if the seed I got was just a shorter breed). It still produced ears though (whew). My tomato plants were grown upside down this year for kicks. The cherry tomato plant was given up upon in mid May and thrown into our “for the dump” tire pile. I came back to it a month later without having watered it, still in it’s upside down container and saw some green on it so I gave it another chance. Be danged if that plant didn’t completely explode with tomatoes this year.
Beans were prolific and the one tiny pea teepee was producing quite late into the season (from what I understood; mid august still had small pea pods on it).
Cucumbers were awful but also in the ground about a month late so it’s not their fault.
I look forward to a far more productive garden this year as I give SFG a go.
Enjoy reading your blog~
Beautiful corn! And thanks for writing this blog. I’m west of Red Deer (lesliville) and I put corn in this year. Did you start this inside 3 weeks early, and plant seedlings? This is my first garden so I’m a newbie. I am also a year late it would seem!
Kayla: In the past, I have planted indoors and then transplanted later, but for the last few years, I have just planted directly into the garden. It seems to work just fine!