knee high on the fourth of july

The reason we rented a community garden plot this year because we don't have a place to put one in at home (giant tree in the back, several smaller trees and lots of neighborhood dogs peeing in the front). Last year, to solve this problem, we grew things in self watering containers called EarthBoxes on the deck above our sunroom.

They worked great and we had tomatoes, peppers and eggplants coming out of our ears all summer long. (I would highly reccomend Earthboxes for people who have a small amount of outdoor space, but not enough for a big veggie garden.) This year, thanks to the garden plot, we have tons of space and need more room to plant more tomatoes, peppers and eggplants like a hole in the head. But we still have last year's EarthBoxes cluttering up the garage and I have been trying to figure out what to do with them.

I am going to give one with some tomato seedlings in it to a friend, but I've been having a hard time figuring out what to do with the rest of them. I thought of selling them at our upcoming garage sale, but some day we might not have time for a giant garden plot and might want to use them.

I was at the grocery store today checking out their seedling selection (even though I need more seedlings like two holes in the head) and I found the answer: we're gonna grow corn.

Corn is hard feeding plant that sucks up a lot of nutrients so you can't grow it near other stuff, and it takes up a lot of space because you need to plant a lot of it to get it to pollinate properly, so I had decided not to grow it in our plot. Each Earthbox can hold 16 corn plants (how that's possible, I don't know) so using the ones we've already got we can grow enough to have it do well. And even if we don't get many ears, it will look nice and we can grow it along the street side railing of the deck so that when it gets taller it will offer us some privacy!

images here, here and here