On top of our fabulous bean harvest this summer, our sweet corn is ripe. This year our garden corn is Espresso, a SU hybrid that we grew last year. Boy, is it ever a nice, very sweet, albeit hybrid, corn. The ears are averaging nine inches long with plenty of tender kernels on each cob. So I’m canning like crazy. Yesterday I did Mexican corn (corn with mixed sweet green and red peppers) and today I’m doing plain old sweet corn to get ‘er done!
Unfortunately, the cows got into the old pig pasture and ate nearly all of Will’s highly prized Seneca Horizon sweet corn. Boy, are we ever disappointed! Talk about a crop failure! We have friends that are also raising this variety so we’ll have to see if we can buy seed from them for our seed business. Tough break.
Our tomatoes are beginning to ripen. The Hanky Red, a small to medium-sized very early tomato beat the pack. We thought Moravsky Div was the winner but then found our Hanky Reds were actually ahead of them. We even have a Bill Bean getting ripe that will weigh about 2 pounds. Pretty early for such a big tomato. We can hardly wait.
We’ve had very cold, rainy weather. Yesterday was 55 degrees and today the HIGH is 52, with rain and wind. Brrrr. Will hauled our last hay home from our second farm and the hay storage area is full. One more farm to go but he lost the brake rotor on our pickup near home so will have to do some repair work first. It’s always something but we just keep plodding along. Then some wonderful thing happens to surprise us and we perk right up. That’s homesteading! — Jackie
Staci,
Luckily, we live in an area that is so isolated, with nobody growing corn anywhere nearby, the corn ear worms aren’t a problem. Thank God!!! We’ve had good luck by using Bt on our developing ears to keep the little buggers out. Also drops of mineral oil squirted in the very silk end, into the end of the ear will also cut down on the worms.
Nah, we aren’t working ourselves too hard, just keep plugging along.
Elizabeth,
So very sorry to hear you got frost. Big bummer. But hopefully you’ll be able to save some of your crop.
Staci: I have a horrible time with corn worms too. This year I squirted a bit of mineral oil into the end of each ear as it was developing. It worked, I only saw 2 worms this year, and they were in an ear that I had missed.
That said, mine was a flour corn, so it had plenty of time for the mineral oil to dissipate before picking. For sweet corn the timing might be trickier.
Last year my flour corn was eaten by raccoons before the corn worms had a chance, but my flint corn wasn’t. The worms did so much damage that I only got about half a cup of flint corn out of a 10×10 patch!!!
I don’t have chickens yet, but I’m told that letting them loose in the garden after things are harvested can help keep the corn worm population down. Along with other bugs.
Jackie, how do you keep the worms out of your corn? This the first year for corn at my new farm and the worms were just horrible. They pretty much ate half of the corn. I was able to get only a dozen fresh eating ears with out much damage all of the rest was cut up and canned because the worms were so bad. Im sorry to hear about Wills corn patch, hopefully you can get some seed to sell, it was on my next springs list. Glad to hear your tomatoes are doing well, i know of few people that had any luck with them down here in Arkansas. It was just too wet at first and then it turned off way to hot and dry. Please dont work yourself too hard.
We had a frost Saturdy night. (Thought we were going to miss that early frost that we sometimes get in August….I was wrong). We covered everything we could get to. Still not sure if the squash and beans were lost. The next couple of days will tell. Really makes me sad. All that work. All that food.
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