Friday, May 21, 2010

First Corn Harvest

I plucked the first of our corn last night, and this is what i have to say about it.


Firstly, delicious! We ate it mostly raw, warmed under the broiler a bit, with salt. Sweet sweet sweet!


Secondly, one of the cobs i harvested was empty inside - there was sign of nasty bug entry, and all the kernels were eaten off inside. I'm thinking corn earworm? Any other ideas? I recently learned a great tip over at Not Dabbling In Normal to remedy them: mineral oil placed on the tip of the cob after the silks wither. I'll be doing that today or the next to the remaining cobs in hopes of deterring more bandits. This harvest of 4 small ears yielded 1 pound 8 ounces.

The nasty, immature cob - a good cob, but with clearly 'messed up' kernels: 
any musings on the cause of the irregulatity? 
Served with (store bought) veggie burger and garden onions.

Thirdly, the Casino variety is doing MUCH better than the Sweet Treat variety. I plan on letting one cob mature completely and harvesting it as seed corn. My goal for next year is to plant only (or mostly) seeds saved from this year's garden, more on that later. Casino's cobs are fuller and more mature. The little Sweet Treat i plucked was more like 'baby corn' and not sweet at all.

Fourthly: nothing goes to waste around here! The girls each got their own cob to play with at the end, picking out the last minuscule bits of corn our human teeth couldn't get out, and dispatching that not so great cob of immature corn that i wasn't too keen on eating.


Overall: i think corn is worth growing! My placement seems to be facilitating its pollination alright. There are a few stragglers at the corners not developing overly well, but that's to be expected. I'll wait another week or so before harvesting any more to see if the cobs plump out a bit more, but i'll be watching those casino cobs closely: don't want them getting tough!

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