"Replant, and Thin no more..."

Or something like that.

Handsome Hombre shared pictures from "home" of corn fields. They looked much like this image. Widely spaced corn (Mais) with beau coup beans filling the space between them.

I replanted the four rows of sweet corn that failed to germinate. I found some "younger" sweet corn seed with 74 day maturity and replanted 130/160 feet to the younger seed. The remaining 30 feet were planted to pickling cucumbers. I crowded the cukes on the east ends of the rows to minimize shading issues.

I replanted sunflowers. Paradoxically, I was having plants dying on the east end of the rows where they were getting more water. It may be a wire-worm issue.

Southern Belle expressed an interest in tomatillas for salsa. Hastay's Greenhouse still had a few plants. Roger also suggested cilantro so I picked up a pot of that, too. Being the Cheap-old-Bill that I am, I separated out the 12 plants in the pot and planted them separately.

Roger said that if I did not pick every-single-fruit that I would be cursed to have tomatillas as a weed into perpetuity. That is a curse I can live with. Weeds are unavoidable. Better to have edible ones than poisonous ones.

Multipliers

Being able to irrigate is a multiplier. It varies by year and location. Some locations, say Garden City, Kansas, need supplemental water nearly every year. Other locations, say Garden City, Michigan may benefit from extra water one year in four.

In the years when it is needed, supplemental water can easily double the amount of crop you can harvest. Sometimes it is the only thing standing between a harvest and total failure.

A more realistic way to look at the issue is to think of it as a divider. If irrigation can double a crop then the canny gardener will DOUBLE the area he plants if he cannot guarantee supplemental water. If his calculations suggest that he "needs" 400 square-feet-of-garden-per-person to provide a comfortable margin of calories and nutrition, then he ought double it if he anticipates power-or-water to irrigate might become "iffy".

He can plant double and if the rains don't come and if the utilities prohibit "watering", then he can take his hoe and remove every-other-plant. If the rains come then he will be golden and have produce to donate.

Another "multiplier" is fertilizer. If fertilizer (especially nitrogen) becomes forbidden or unavailable, then the canny gardener might double his footprint again. 400 sq-ft became 800 sq-ft becomes 1600 sq-ft per person. Half of the garden is in food producing plants. The other half is in a rye-red clover recovery year. If things go totally into the septic tank the rye can be harvested as grain and straw. Red clover is pretty decent feed for rabbits.