Three Sisters Year 4

2 days ago 27 ears of sweet corn. Today, 72 ears. My spouse was a bit peeved! We gave a bunch away to her friend, who gave us okra and cucumbers. I expect in 2 days there will be a lot more. Time to sharpen the knife and freeze some.

In my wife's home country, ears of sweet corn are $4 for ONE EAR! So we joke that in the last few days we have eaten hundreds of dollars worth of corn.

I planted multiple rows over a few weeks, so the corn season should be long. Hope she doesn't kill me before it's done. It's affecting my diet too. My attempt to lose weight (18 pounds so far in 2 years) has stalled.

Sweet corn. Some have purple cobs and leaves but only a few with odd-colored kernels. A few red ears. The result of about 20 years of crossing a dozen different commercial seed varieties plus my purple corn, and selecting for sweet. Still occasionally get a tough, semi-sweet ear, but most of them are very good.

Deer bit the end right off! Have had a dozen or so of this sort this year. Annoying because it lets the bugs and mold in even if the deer only eats one bite. Not usually a big problem.

Lessor problem this year than many years is bird damage. Quite a few look like the pic below, but I am not seeing any deeply stripped down ears. They seem to be eating a few off the tip and moving on. Not good, but it has been a lot worse.

Random pics down the rows. Lots of ground cover of various sorts.

What I am doing about the deer and birds. This method works very well. It seems to help keep bugs out of the ears too. Period of greatest loss if right after pollination, during the milk to dough stages. Once the seeds harden I see very little new damage.