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Garden in the City: Corn Killer Stalked by Guilt

 Lucky stalk No. 13, rescued from euthanization to live out its days on our rear deck.
Lucky stalk No. 13, rescued from euthanization to live out its days on our rear deck.
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DNAinfo/Patty Wetli

ALBANY PARK — If it's possible to be both a squeamish wimp and a cold-blooded killer at the same time, well, that's me.

I was forced to murder some of my corn, and it was wrenching.

Excuse me. I didn't mean murder. I meant "thin."

"Thinning" is what we gardeners have to do when we wind up with too many plants crowded into too small a space, after we've oversown. Why do we oversow? Because experience tells us that if we bury exactly the number of seeds desired, we will choose precisely the seeds that will refuse to sprout, and we'll wind up with jack squat come harvest time.

Patty discusses her emotional "thinning" process on this week's "Garden in the City" podcast:

Corn, according to every reliable source I consulted, should be sown to produce one stalk per square foot. So I sowed two seeds per square foot: two rows of four squares, 16 in total.

I fully expected no more than 25 percent to germinate, particularly given that the seed packet's expiration date was 2013.

You know what happened: All 16 sprouted.

I was giddy.

The thing about growing corn in an 8-by-4-foot raised bed is that the undertaking feels almost quixotic — ironic given how many acres Big Agriculture devotes to the crop. Fields of corn are the equivalent of white noise to Midwesterners, so ubiquitous is their presence along every interstate and back road.

But for the average hobbyist, corn is a high-maintenance, long-gestating, low-yield space hog. Those 8 square feet in my garden might, might, produce a half-dozen ears of edible corn come August. Compare that with a single square foot of regenerating lettuce, which I've been munching on for weeks now, and it's clear why so many home growers don't consider corn worth the trouble.

"Corn has more problems than any other garden crop"  — this from no less an authority than Mel Bartholomew, who wrote the book on square-foot gardening — literally, he's the author of "Square Foot Gardening."

A heartbreaker is what corn is, either failing to pollinate, succumbing to myriad pests or just plain failing to thrive.

And yet, there's no denying corn's appeal: It looks majestic in a garden. Those tall, erect tassel-topped spikes are unmistakable, even from a distance, towering over a sea of otherwise indistinguishable green — they're like knights standing at attention.

I wanted to see if I was up to the challenge, so when those first sprigs of green sprouted from the soil, I counted that as no small victory.

"Oh, you have corn," people would say whenever I ticked off the list of our plot's contents, with the sort of awe usually reserved for the announcement of say, the attempt to row solo across the Atlantic. (At least that was my interpretation.)

I marked every inch the stalks added in height — aiming for the proverbial "knee high by the Fourth of July" — not even thinking about the eventual ears I could potentially consume. All I wanted was for my corn to grow and grow and grow.

And it did. All 16 stalks. Twice the recommended allotment.

Master Gardener told me half of them, eight, would have to go in order to give the remaining plants an optimal chance at success — i.e. maturing and producing ears. I had, she said, already waited too long.

It was "Sophie's Choice" time.

"Help me," I said to Dave. "You have to help me choose."

"I'm not going to tell you which ones to kill," he said.

I knew what he meant. As much as the plot is "ours," the individual plants are "mine," in that I know them and love them. I've battled to protect them, fed them, supported them, sheltered them, talked to them. I have not, lest you think I'm completely bonkers, named them. But if a decision were to be made regarding which stalks to retain and which to remove, it would and should be mine.

I looked at each square. Two stalks. Which one? Left or right? One or two? A or B?

There had always been a pair of runts, side by side. Second row, second square from the right. I held my breath and pulled them both. Knife to the gut.

Fourteen stalks left, six to go.

I surveyed the survivors, looking for signs of weakness. Which ones were shorter, which ones were thinner? I gave each a shake, testing for sturdiness.

I chose another vaguely scrawnier victim and tugged, my heart in my throat. It offered little resistance, barely any roots holding the plant in place. I piled it on top of its fellow sacrifices.

Thirteen stalks left, five to go.

"We could dig one up and transplant it on the back deck," Dave suggested, as he watched me agonize.

Twelve stalks left, four to go.

I stepped away from the plot. Paced around neighboring beds. Clearly I didn't have what it took to be a farmer, who can't afford the luxury of forming personal attachments to each and every plant and beast. If I were a vital link in the nation's food chain, we would all starve.

But I'm not a farmer. I'm a gardener.

"Enough," Dave said. "This is too emotional."

We left 12 stalks standing. Perhaps they are too crowded. Perhaps they will never reach their full potential. Perhaps this makes me a bad grower. I'm willing to bear that blame.

We took lucky No. 13 home and placed it in a container where it's struggling to adjust.

"It doesn't have to be productive," Dave said. "It just has to live."

Bonus basil tip: With all the drama surrounding my corn, admittedly I took my eye off the health of some of my other plants. The basil, I suddenly noticed, is looking a bit yellow. A quick stroll around other plots showed the issue wasn't limited to my plant.

After researching a number of gardening websites, I suspect the basil's been doused with too much water, both by my own hand and Mother Nature's. It also hasn't been as hot or as sunny as the plant would like. My course of action: ease up on the water, add a dose of fertilizer and hope for the best.

For more "Garden in the City" podcasts, listen here: