3 Sisters Garden, 2024, Year 2

Yesterday's harvest. About 10 lbs potatoes and a couple varieties of beans.

Ten days later from last post, the corns are tasseling and some are silking too. Beans are growing fast too but can't match the speed of corns. I guess I will leave the stalks for the beans to climb after I harvest the sweet corns.

May, that looks very nice. Glad the drought finally broke. Looks like you will get some corn.

My only garden work the last couple of weeks has been daily killing of squash bugs, and picking zucchini, sweet corn, beans, and peas. I am down to one zucchini plant (the perfect number to have), but saw some tiny zucchini's on another plant in my other garden. So probably will be overloaded soon.

Have eaten sweet corn twice. The tiny garden in the back yard is about done, but the big sweet corn garden is just about ready to produce. The seed is mostly my own saved seeds from many generations, with some commercial seed mixed in for variety and guaranteed good ears. I planted 4 times, so hoping for a long season. Some plants are only 6" sprouts (late replantings), others ready to pick.

The sweet corn garden. Squash, beans and watermelons interplanted:

Look like you will have lots of sweet corns to enjoy! Are they totally not related to the flour corns in a different garden? I seems to see some plants with dark stalks in the row. Can they be used as flour corn too?

May Lotito wrote:Look like you will have lots of sweet corns to enjoy! Are they totally not related to the flour corns in a different garden? I seems to see some plants with dark stalks in the row. Can they be used as flour corn too?

For years I just planted the sweet corn and the flint corn in the same garden, so they crossed every year for 18 years. This is the first year I have made the effort to start a new garden just for sweet corn. I deliberately saved seed each year that appeared to be crossed with the flint corn to add some genetic variety. There is some dent corn mixed in too. The first generation crosses are sometimes a bit bland and chewy. Most of it is pretty good though.

I got tired of all the insect damage and mold caused by the sweet corn genes in my flint corn, which is the main reason I separated them this year. The sweet corn mixes make good corn flour. I don't try to separate them since it is all mixed together on any given ear.

Well. The birds are at it again this year. Or something, but no tooth marks so pretty sure it's birds and not racoons. Plan for today is go to the farm and start cutting the bottoms off all those pop bottles my brother has been saving for me since last fall. Slip one over each ear. I can easily understand why 19th century farmers killed off the Carolina parakeet, and tried to kill off crows and blackbirds!

Crows were very destructive to my first real corn crop, so I’ve spent three years feeding the local bluejay population peanuts and I’ve observed them shooing the crows away. Now the crows leave the corn for my raccoons to destroy.

My new Daughter in Law asked me this morning if I would grow corn for her. I told her that if she built me Fort Knox, I'd grow corn for her!

I put a couple dozen plastic drink bottles on ears of corn. Only about 200 more to go. Turned out to be easier than I expected to cut the bottoms off, a slim, sharp knife did the job easily. Forgot my camera, will get a pic eventually.

Jay Angler wrote:My new Daughter in Law asked me this morning if I would grow corn for her. I told her that if she built me Fort Knox, I'd grow corn for her!

Deer?

Thom Bri wrote:

Jay Angler wrote:My new Daughter in Law asked me this morning if I would grow corn for her. I told her that if she built me Fort Knox, I'd grow corn for her!

Deer?

And raccoon. I don't know if the bunnies would eat it when it's small, but they took out half my summer bean crop. I have little planting space that gets enough sun, coupled with a Maritime climate that cools off a lot at night. Warm-weather crops are a challenge, but they're what my family likes to eat. Unfortunately, protecting for one type of plant predator, doesn't protect from the other two. Since Hubby's "official farm" part of the property is an egg business and occasionally meat chickens, if the raccoon go bad, we can legally deal with them. However, my goal is to keep them wild and not bothering us, and corn would attract them.  

Does anyone know for sure, if they're just as attracted to the grain corn for tortillas etc, as the sweet corn? They seem to be able to grow "feed corn" here, but I'm not knowledgeable on the subtle differences.

Jay Angler wrote:

Thom Bri wrote:

Jay Angler wrote:My new Daughter in Law asked me this morning if I would grow corn for her. I told her that if she built me Fort Knox, I'd grow corn for her!

Deer?

And raccoon. I don't know if the bunnies would eat it when it's small, but they took out half my summer bean crop. I have little planting space that gets enough sun, coupled with a Maritime climate that cools off a lot at night. Warm-weather crops are a challenge, but they're what my family likes to eat. Unfortunately, protecting for one type of plant predator, doesn't protect from the other two. Since Hubby's "official farm" part of the property is an egg business and occasionally meat chickens, if the raccoon go bad, we can legally deal with them. However, my goal is to keep them wild and not bothering us, and corn would attract them.  

Does anyone know for sure, if they're just as attracted to the grain corn for tortillas etc, as the sweet corn? They seem to be able to grow "feed corn" here, but I'm not knowledgeable on the subtle differences.

Racoons much prefer sweet corn. I have never seen them do damage to field corn.

The farmer who farms around my garden traps groundhogs and racoons in live traps and releases them at a river some miles away. Must be several miles minimum or the racoons will just walk home in a few days.

Deer don't bother the corn much, but they eat the new sprouts of just about everything. They seem to really love sunflower, they walk right through my corn to get at the volunteer sunflowers, to the point that I'd plant sunflowers even if I didn't want them.

Rabbits love the beans, but rarely bother the corn.

Birds will pull up the sprouting corn.

My main solution to all this is to way overplant the corn. If I want 3 stalks finally, I plant 7 seeds, and still have to replant quite a few.

Raccoons eat my field corn here.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Raccoons eat my field corn here.

Wow.

Try again to post pics. Bird-pecked ear. Bottles.

Smut common this year, I have pitched at least a dozen ears and a few stalks. A side effect of planting too many years in the same spot, I suppose. Last year was bad too. Also leaving the trash and stalks on the surface. I cut them down and pitch them far from the garden, but doubt that really helps much. Burning or plowing under is supposed to help, but I don't plan to do either. Just put up with it and hope that eliminating the weak genes will eventually help.

One of 3 beehives at the garden:

Thom Bri wrote:One of 3 beehives at the garden:

You're lucky to have that. With the crazy weather here, I've not been seeing the bee action I usually see.

Jay Angler wrote:

Thom Bri wrote:One of 3 beehives at the garden:

You're lucky to have that. With the crazy weather here, I've not been seeing the bee action I usually see.

13 total right now, up from 2 at the start of spring. We will see how winter survival goes. It's been nearly ideal weather here.

First ear picked. It's early, will need drying, but the seeds are hard to not too early.

That's a perfect looking ear of corn!  You are obviously doing something right!

Bloody Butcher?

That cob looks amazing!

I have some dark kernel corn that hasnt charged colors yet.
I'm going to harvest some of mine now, but let other mature.
The 2 liter trick will really help me.

Jeff Marchand wrote:That's a perfect looking ear of corn!  You are obviously doing something right!

Bloody Butcher?

Not Bloody Butcher. The original seed was purchased in the 1990s, it was a speckled, mixed ornamental corn. I selected to increase the color towards red/purple. But also added in various other corns, and it has crossed multiple times with standard dent hybrid corn. Probably full of GMOs for that reason. I select away from the dent corn traits, but even if there are no more cross-pollinations it will continue to show up.

So it's mainly a mix of flint and dent corns.

William Bronson wrote:
The 2 liter trick will really help me.

I started using plastic bottles when gardening in Japan. They have a species of crow they call 'jungle crows' which I heard were an import from south Asia. Huge birds, maybe twice the size of US crows. They destroyed my corn. I tried various tricks but only the plastic bottles foiled them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-billed_crow

Worried that it would cause mold, but didn't notice it then. This is the first time I have tried it in the US. Will let you know how it goes.

Seeing more bird damage so picked a few ears. Pretty decent pollination this year; rain has been good. Still too early really to be picking. The dark ears are getting hard but the light colored ears are still milky, thus the bird damage.

The lodged stalks from the derecho on July 15th appear to be making good ears, even the ones that didn't come back up. Predicting more rodent damage than usual this year though.

Some corn, and my lettuce seeds drying. Next time we are expecting a good rain I will scatter them on the garden surfaces.

The three ears on the left are pretty much my goal look.

My corns are silking but the weather has been very hot and dry. And it's likely to continue till the end of the month. I irrigate and dust more pollens in the center of the ear to help with pollination. Most of the corns have three ears, some have four, including the tillers. I am worrying the later ears won't receive as many pollens by the time to silk and would like to save some pollen now. A short term storage of 2 weeks should be sufficient. Has anyone tried preserving viable pollens?

I would highly recommend the book, Braiding Sweetgrass.  In it, Kimmerer talks a lot about the "Three Sisters."

A few bean pics. They love climbing over the lodged corn.

polyculture

Picked a few ears of corn today, mostly because I saw bird pecks on them. A few ears were actually dry enough to pick anyway, the husks were dry all the way through. It would be better to leave them longer to dry in the field, but with the birds and bug damage I picked them today. Planted April 30 so picked today = 100 days for the very first ears, but most is still green.

That's why I don't consider this a landrace, yet. Too many undefined characters. Plant any given seed and there is no way to guess what the result will be. Maybe in a few years of selection I can call this a landrace, but not yet. In the pic below there are dent corn ears, flint corn, and even a few seeds scattered in of sweet corn. Color of the various plant parts and seeds is not stable.

Bird, insect and mold damage:

Sweet corn seed saved for next year. This is a puny ear but it grew and pollinated under a peach tree in the shade, in really poor clay soil that almost nothing will grow in. I figure it's tough. Zero insect damage. I have selected several plants to collect seed from, but it's hard not to just eat them!

May Lotito wrote:I am worrying the later ears won't receive as many pollens by the time to silk and would like to save some pollen now. A short term storage of 2 weeks should be sufficient. Has anyone tried preserving viable pollens?

Let us know how it goes. I have never made a practice of hand pollinating other than casually on very late ears if a possible pollinator is all the way across the garden. No idea how well it worked.

We are having unfavorable weather since the corns started silking, 0 5 inch rain received in the last 4 weeks and temperature was over 90F for a long time. The tassels from tillers really help out as they come out later and stay closer to the silks. I checked one ear and it isn't too bad.

As for my late planted corns (7/19), they are at V6 already and I even see tassel sitting in the whorl in some of them. I am not sure if this is normal or it has to do with the weather.

I find out an unexpected benefit of growing corn: soil nutrition indicator! Since it's a heavy feeder and grows very fast, any deficiency in the soil is showing up quickly. Like these seedlings have typical calcium and sulfur deficiency at V4 stage, which coincided with the appearance of various insects: thrips, corn borer and aphids. I always believe that insect infestation is the consequence rather than the cause of unhealthy plant. Being able to identify deficiency early on and amend it will keep pest away. For the corns, I applied chicken manure tea and freshly made compost. I will broadcast gypsum on my entire yard this winter since low Ca and S level is widespread, symptoms are showing in other plants too but not as clear as in corn.

Soy nodules:

Today's corn harvest, mostly from fallen, lodged stalks. They are producing decent ears even after being blown over a month ago. Quite a lot of bird damage on the fallen ears, so I am picking them as soon as the husks start to dry.

Harvest today, 76 ears of corn, 20 lbs potatoes, a few onions, a few pounds of
beans, a few tomatoes, sweet corn.

Just like the colors. Lavender ears are new.