Sadly our growing season will be over in a few short weeks here in northern Minnesota. It was kind of a tough year for gardening. We got off to a very cold and rainy start. I think all the sogginess caused most of my tomato plants to come down with blight so we're mostly just getting fruit off of the cherry/grape varieties.

I thought it would be kind of fun to mix in some of these huge sunflowers in with my corn this year… bad idea. I think it must have messed up the pollination or something because most of the inner stalks don't have any corn cobs growing on them. Other than that, we got lots of strawberries and raspberries, beans, peppers, looks like the potato crop will be good, and we can always depend on lots of carrots.

How did your garden turn out? I'm curious if others have had odd weather like we did here and how it affected your garden.

We had the same weather in Arkansas. I live in a condo, so I do container gardening. My parsley & basil do well every yr. I tried 3 varieties of cherry tom. this yr. The huskey cherry reds did well, as usual.  I had a purple that was just ok. My surprise was the yellow variety that is still GOING CRAZY. 

Would loved to have some of that "cold and rainy" start.  I'm in Northern CA and we are all on water restrictins because we are in the third year of a drought.  Still managed to get a few tomatoes, lettuce, chard, potatoes, but really didn't put much effort in it because of the strong possibility we would be limited to household water use only.

Don't see why sunflowers would have any impact on your corn at all.  Must have been some other factor, as corn polinates by dropping the pollen from the flowers down onto the ears.  Maybe not enought wind to shake the pollen down?

 and y

Would loved to have some of that "cold and rainy" start.  I'm in Northern CA and we are all on water restrictins because we are in the third year of a drought.  Still managed to get a few tomatoes, lettuce, chard, potatoes, but really didn't put much effort in it because of the strong possibility we would be limited to household water use only.

Don't see why sunflowers would have any impact on your corn at all.  Must have been some other factor, as corn polinates by dropping the pollen from the flowers down onto the ears.  Maybe not enought wind to shake the pollen down?

 and y

I have thought of California a lot this summer as we got soaked over and over. Wish we could have sent half of it down to you. Not sure what the deal was with my corn, I had some stalks that were over 6ft and others that were under 4 ft. The ears didn't fill out very well and it just didn't taste very good either. We ended up putting it out for the squirrels and deer. Maybe it was just the bad weather. At least the lawn likes the weather, it's a beautiful brilliant green this year.

where did you get the corn you planted?

Today's edition of the Star-Tribune (Twin Cities daily newspaper) has a big feature about some householders in New Brighton, MN, who are really into "urban gardening" and who even have a small chicken coop and flock of laying hens in addition to their BIG garden.  The gist of the article is a description of their operation and how their neighbors have reacted to it (both positively and negatively).   "Urban gardening" is on the increase around the state, and various municipalities have begun considering what regulations their communities will deem judicious.,

Charles I got it from Johnnyseeds.com. It was the organic untreated Luscious variety. I read on another site that some of the seed companies don't really have organic corn seed right, resulting in just the kind of problems I had so maybe that's it, but  it could also be the cruddy weather we had here. I also didn't put any compost down this year like I usually do so maybe that could be part of it too.

Bonnie I am also a Minnesotan, although I live in a rural area so many of my neighbors either have or had chickens. The roosters crowing can get a little annoying even here so I think if I had that happening any closer (My nearest neighbor is 1/4 mile away) I can understand why the neighbors wouldn't like it. If they only had a few laying hens I can't imagine how that would bother anybody though. If people choose to use their yard to grow food I don't see why that should bother anyone either. I haven't read the article, I will have to look for it online.