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.

Corn harvest is starting! It's early, but I have learned to harvest when I see the outer layers of husk drying. Done early eliminates a huge amount of bird and insect damage. If I left them a month longer the ears would fill out a little more, but I would have to throw away a lot of moldy ears. Particularly since all the sudden the weather has decided to get wet. So today I picked about a dozen ears, most of them pictured below.

I am happy to see good pollination. A couple of these ears did not pollinate well but the great majority so far look good. Still seeing a fair amount of sweet corn seeds scattered among the normal seeds. Trying to eliminate this trait since it leads to more insect damage and mold. A few with double tips. I see a few tiny earworm larvae on the tips of some ears. Good to harvest before they destroy the ear.

The ruler is 12 inches or 30 cm. Longest ear right at 12 inches, but with dry-down will end up about 10 inches. The ears on the far right are what I am selecting for.

Last week I picked two droopy ears of corn that the husks have dried and turned pale. But they were not matured at closer inspection, the lower half of the kernel still can be dented with finger nail. Plus the leaves are still green. So I watered the other plants and let them finish naturally. This is the first year my corns don't die back suddenly. I do protect the ears somehow with paper bags and boxes because some of them have short husks: the cob outgrowing the husks leaving the tip exposed. 10 more days to go.

May Lotito wrote:Last week I picked two droopy ears of corn that the husks have dried and turned pale. But they were not matured at closer inspection, the lower half of the kernel still can be dented with finger nail. Plus the leaves are still green. So I watered the other plants and let them finish naturally. This is the first year my corns don't die back suddenly. I do protect the ears somehow with paper bags and boxes because some of them have short husks: the cob outgrowing the husks leaving the tip exposed. 10 more days to go.

I expect your boxes work as well as my plastic bottles.
I get a lot of open tips too, and that's certainly attractive to birds and bugs.
Funny thing, my sweet corn, which is crosses with my purple corn, has very long husks that deeply cover the tips. I wonder if that is some genetic trick picked up from the sweet corn or if it is just because the cobs are shorter so the same length husk covers better.

Pic shows 3 new varieties I got this year and my purple corn on the far right to compare. The 3 middle ears are pop corn just picked today, 2 varieties. The left 3 are either Baker Creek Delaware Black Flint, or Dakota Black. I don't recall which one got planted where.

After last year's failure of the Glass Gem corn I hesitated whether to plant much of it again. As it turns out I ended up putting in more than I expected. Almost a full row, and I also used it for replanting on hills that failed to germinate or too few germinated. But I have had good luck with it in other years, and it has several characteristics I like.

It is tall and has sturdy stems.
It is prolific, lots of ears result from one seed planted.
It suckers heavily, and the suckers are nearly as good as the main stalk. I counted 7 ears on one cluster, the main stalk plus good ears on several suckers.
Generally healthy plants, very little insect damage, and the birds mostly leave it alone. Husks completely cover the ears. Very little mold.
It is pretty. The ears are small, 4-5 inches long, slim, and brightly colored.
The crosses seem about halfway between the Glass Gem and my other corn.

Below is a pic of 4 Glass Gem ears just picked today and yesterday. Nice lavender color. Surprising since what I planted had lots of green seeds, but so far this year few green seeds. Next to them are two pretty average ears of my purple corn for comparison. If you wanted to start growing corn it would not be a mistake to start with Glass Gem.

What we are eating, purple sweet corn. This is repeated crossings of standard commercial sweet corn with my purple corn. It has been several years since I added any pure sweet corn seed to the mix. Last year I had a lot of purple ears that had sweet corn seeds scattered among them. I saved some of those seeds and mixed them in with my sweet corn seeds. The result was pretty good. Most of the purple ears were soft and sweet, but a few were not so sweet. I have saved a lot of seed for 2027 already.

According to my wife, we have eaten about 500 ears of corn this summer, plus I gave a way maybe a hundred more. Sadly, I only have one more pick left in the garden, then no more corn until next summer.

Double-tip ears. This year I got a lot of these. I think it is because the double tip ears are generally thicker so I may have selected for this trait by accident. It's not always obvious that an ear is double, as the one dark purple ear shows. If you didn't look carefully you might not notice.

This is a trait I don't like, because it thickens the tip so the husks do not fully cover the tip, allowing birds and insects a highway into the ear.

More on Glass Gem. I got two obvious crosses with my corn. I have a lot of ears that I think are crosses, but on these two I know they are, because I picked them from my glass gem row, and the plants looked like typical Glass Gem plants and not like my purple corn plants. Quite distinct.

These ears are not quite twice as long as the Glass Gem ears, and considerably thicker. I think it will make a good addition to the pool of genetics.

Pic shows several typical Glass Gem ears. One ear, on the left, that I suspect is partly Glass Gem, and the two ears on the right that I know are crosses:

My

Thom Bri wrote:Double-tip ears.

This is a rare case of fasciation .  

May Lotito wrote:My

Thom Bri wrote:Double-tip ears.

This is a rare case of fasciation .  

Seeing more of it than usual this year. Most years get a few.