Use a string line to support heavy corn stalks

Several days ago my corn, which I had carefully planted, grown from seed, and have grown quite fond of blew down in the wind! What to do? If I let it stay there it would die on the ground or I could try something…

I decided to run a string line attached on both sides of the fence on both sides of the corn. This kept the corn upright; little wobbly, but stable. Then I added a bag of soil around the corn stalks and some of the exposed roots to keep it upright.

I went to bed that night hoping that my corn would be alright. The next day I saw that the corn looked somewhat better and some of it was beginning to stand on its own! The day after that the corn wasn’t leaning on the line anymore and was standing straight and tall. My quick thinking and quick actions had saved my precious corn! Now it is even stronger and is still growing taller every day. The golden colored tassels on the top are beginning to emerge. I have a feeling that my corn will not only continue to survive, but also thrive.

I thought I did everything right! I put up two fences around my garden to keep out animals. One fence was a made of three foot chicken wire which I buried about one foot deep and the other was a four foot wire fence that was loose on top so animals could not climb up and get in. I planted six tomato plants, six lettuce, six cucumbers, and six zucchini plants. Everything was great. I mulched with the grass clippings from my lawn and watered regularly.

Then one morning I went out to watch my garden grow and notice all my zucchini plants where gone. Whatever got into my garden ate just my zucchini plants and left the rest of my garden alone.

The only thing I can think of is something got into my garden started chomping away on my zucchini and then got interrupted by a noise.

If I didn’t think of something fast I might lose the whole garden to an unknown critter. I can’t stay up all night and keep guard over my garden! I have a motion detector light that is close by, but clearly that did not help. I need something that moves and makes noise but what? Later that day when I was rinsing out plastic and tins for recycling, it came to me. Pie tins!

And that’s what I did. I hung pie tins on all sides of my garden. They make noise in the slightest of breeze and if something was trying to climb my fence they would surely make a clatter. I also added a small beach ball to roll around gently inside the garden just in case those critters get past my pie tins.

It’s been a month since I installed my pie tins and my vegetables are flourishing including the zucchini plants that I replanted.

I still don’t know what ate my zucchini plants but I’m sure glad I decided to make a pie!

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