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Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

I just see Butternuts as something that was good enough for the Iroquois and should be good enough for me, Professor Shark.

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GORDON
Jan 1, 2006

by Fluffdaddy

Faerunner posted:

Corn is an overgrown tropical grass which requires a lot of itself to properly pollinate. It is also a nutrient hog and can play host to a thousand diseases and insect pests which will reduce your yield. It's also SO cheap around here when it's in season that nobody really needs to grow it for the savings. I have yet to meet a home gardener in my area (PA, zone 7) who really likes to grow corn.

I tried corn 3 years in a row here in northwest Ohio (don't know what my zone is), and basically it was too much work for too little payoff. The fact that when my corn was ready everybody elses was ready too, and it would cost $4 for a dozen ears, made it a stupid waste of time to do myself. And also yes, had more blight and insect problems with the corn than anything else I grow. Others in this area I've heard had problems with racoons wiping out their corn, too. Just a general PITA.

Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

So this is a thing I did over the last couple days:



I laid down newspaper between rows and up onto the mounds, leaving only a thin, long area of exposed soil, then put black mulch on top of the newspaper to weigh it down. I did this because weeds always get out of control in our garden each year.

I've only done it for about 1/3 of the garden, and my girlfriend is worried about water not getting to plants and the mulch burning them.

Opinions?

Faerunner
Dec 31, 2007
Newspaper and mulch will trap and hold water, allowing more of it to permeate the soil eventually and/or keeping it from evaporating as quickly on hot, dry days. Black mulch is not the greatest for this as it also traps heat (and is therefore nice to put around heat-loving plants like tomatoes but not so nice around lettuce and spinach). If you're in a temperate climate you shouldn't worry too much about cooking your plants; only the top layer of mulch will be warmed and the soil under it should stay insulated and relatively cooler.

Tell your girlfriend that an urban farmer says newspaper/cardboard + mulch are good for the walkways.

Edit: This is assuming of course that you are watering correctly in the first place, which means long deep soakings every few days, not 5 minutes every morning. Get a drip line set up if you can't handle standing out there for half an hour with the hose. You want your plants to develop deep root systems, which means you need to wet more than the top inch of dirt/mulch. Unless it's lettuce, anyway.

Faerunner fucked around with this message at 15:41 on May 26, 2015

Captain Bravo
Feb 16, 2011

An Emergency Shitpost
has been deployed...

...but experts warn it is
just a drop in the ocean.
He's in Canada (I.E. The Land of the Ice and the Snow) so I can't think that black mulch is anything but a good thing.

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