Hi, I’m Farm to Table chef Teca Thompson, at TecaThompson.com. And today, we’re talking about how to hoe and weed a corn patch. So, since corn is a warm weather crop that thrives with abundance of water and nutrients, weeds are a constant problem, and they have to be constantly taken care –otherwise, they can detract the nutrients, water, and room the corn needs to grow and properly form throughout its growing season. So, I’m just doing an example on one sock of corn at the moment, but if you can just imagine taking this into your patch of corn, it’s basically the same guidelines for weeding and hoeing around your corn. So, I’m just going to take my hoe and I’m just going to go and hoe it at the root. And, it’s really important to make sure you get the root of the plant – like crabgrass and stuff like this – and you just pull it out of the ground, and then you discard it. You can either compost it, or discard it in the trash. Now, since corn gets watered so often, ideally it should be an inch and a half per week. I find the easiest time to weed and hoe your garden is after you’ve watered it, because that moistens the roots, and it allows it to pull the weeds out a lot easier. Or, you can always do it by hand, where you just want to grab the top tuft and just pull them out, and always making sure to get the roots, like I have here. And again, discard or compost. So, now, for weeds that are growing closer to your cornstalk, I definitely like to hand-weed these, because you don’t obviously want to disrupt the corn with your hoe. And, I just take it, I brace my corn, and I just pull the weed directly, and then discard and throw away. So, you’ll want to constantly weed your corn patch throughout the growing period, just because it’s such a good ground for weeds and everything to grow in because it’s fertile and it’s moist. So, you just want to make sure that you constantly do that. And, obviously, if you have a bigger patch of corn, you can use a longer-handled hoe, and that’ll allow you to get into the middle of it and get all those weeds out. I’m Farm to Table chef Teca Thompson, at TecaThompson.com. That is how to hoe and weed your corn patch. Thank you for watching.
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