The epic corn famine of ‘02
“Dear Garden Gabber, What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever grown in a container?” (via email)
Everyone thought we were insane. And they weren’t quiet about it. But there is something intoxicating about gardening. Every spring an overwhelming tide of megalomania hits me and the garden in my head takes on delusional proportions. In their secret heart, I think every gardener feels the same. Then, about a week in (or less if you are hand tilling), reality sets in and my grandiose dreams and head shrink to appropriate levels. But the year my husband and I met, the year we planted our first container garden, no such reality check ever happened. Eventually, the squirrels had to intervene.
We had a third floor apartment that year and no permission or space to start a garden. We did, however have a small stair landing. Not much larger than a fire exit stairway, but exposed to lots of light and too high for garden pests (or so I thought).
We started out humbly enough, with a pot of cherry tomatoes, a single green pepper plant and a tray of jalapeno plants. But we let our early success go to our head. Growing things is filled with contradiction. Sometimes you plant and weed and water, rejoicing and feeling omnipotent when you see those green shoots. Even though I know it’s wrong, deep down I always think, “I did that!” But then usually there’s a row farther down that you have toiled over, practically sweat blood to coax it to life and you get nothing. It always reminds me that the growing really isn’t up to me (especially when a plant I pulled up because I thought it was dead is going gangbusters in the compost pile a week later).
But this little apartment garden made us want to grow more. So we stole a long flowerbox no one was using and bought two of the deepest plastic pots we could (they were about 2 1/2 feet deep). I told everyone we knew that we were going to grow corn in our potted garden and they thought I was nuts. It took 5 big bags of potting mix to fill the pots and I was able to plant about 20 seeds all told. After all, I thought, I don’t want to crowd them (as if the pot was room enough).
Why is it always squirrels?
It took a few weeks but we started to get shoots and then stalks of green corn. I showed everyone who came to the apartment our fine, strong stalks of corn. “They’ll peter out. They’ll never have ears on them,” everyone said. But lo and behold, a few weeks later we had two or three small ears on every stalk. And then, I got cocky. “I can grow anything!” I thought and I would check the ears every day to see if they were ready to eat. I refused to let my husband buy corn. Even at the local farmstands. “Why do you want to buy corn?” I said, “Ours is almost ready and it’s going to be the best corn ever!” A whole month my poor husband waited after the summer corn was available.
Slowly, the ears grew fatter. They never got past the size of cow corn. I came home one day to find the cat yowling at the back door (where the garden was) and I opened it upon a dreadful scene. I wish I could say it took a squirrel army to dash my dreams of gardening glory and my husbands sweet summer corn hopes. I wish I could say there were more squirrels per square foot than I had ever seen before. But to tell the truth, I only saw three. Three fat little squirrels that didn’t even have the courtesy to drag the corn away before feasting on it. How they went through all those plants so quickly, I’ll never know. But they got every single one. Instead of scampering away when I opened the door they dragged the last few ears slowly over the railing and waddled away.
So, to answer your question, I almost grew corn in a container. I’ve known other people to grow watermelons, monster pumpkins, even fruit trees. Container plants may need extra fertilizer and more manual watering sometimes, but really they aren’t much different from “free range” plants. And they can be much easier to maintain, having fewer weeds, being movable in inclement weather and (if you are wiser than me) easier to protect from pests. At the Garden Gabber we’ll be trying out new containers and plants and we’ll let you know how it goes. If you have a container garden, send us pictures and stories of your success (or failures or garden thieves) as well to dk.gould@live.com and we’ll post them here! Stay tuned for how to make friends with or discourage your own squirrel nemeses.
