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Post by Walk on Sept 21, 2014 15:56:11 GMT -5
After the rodent invasion of our Roy's Abenaki Calais Flint Corn I've been keeping a close eye on the Midnight Snack Sweet Corn that's ripening now. It was planted on June 26th, and we picked eating corn from Sept 7th-15th. We started to see a few pecks when picking the last ears for eating, but it was only on a few ears and tiny little pecks. Now that the corn is starting to color up, the damage is getting more widespread. I put up a plastic hawk on a pole, which seemed to do the trick for a couple of days. But today I heard a bird in the patch and snuck up on it, getting within a few feet. It was a downy woodpecker, which I scared off but looked at the cob where it was perched and sure enough there was a strip of fresh damage. This is a first! I've seen woodpeckers on standing corn stalks in the fall, but never going after any of the ears. My husband remembers Woody Woodpecker cartoons where Woody is eating corn from an ear like it's a typewriter roller (remember what typewriters were?). Now my dilemma is how long to leave the corn out on the stalk? I picked the Roy's Abenaki Calais too early. It did color up but the kernels didn't fill fully and I think it will be short weighted. I don't think the sweet corn would tolerate shocking when it's still so green as it might mold rather than dry down. This corn did get some frost damage about 9 days ago so maybe the plants won't be able to push the maturity to completion anyway? It looks like we'll have a week of 60-70*F days and 40*F nights. Any experience with woodpeckers on corn or early harvest of sweet corn seed anyone?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 21, 2014 17:51:33 GMT -5
Corn seed is viable about 25 days after silking. That is at the early fresh eating stage for sweet corn. That is about the time that the tips of the husks start to dry just a little bit. I harvest sweet corn for seed any time after that, and shuck it immediately, and spread it out to dry. I prefer to wait until the dough stage which happens about 10 days later. Sometimes I harvest earlier than fresh eating stage if animal predation is heavy: Germination suffers and the seed is smaller, and I wouldn't share seed like that with other people, but it's good enough for my purposes to perpetuate the crop.
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Post by Walk on Sept 22, 2014 9:52:32 GMT -5
Thanks for the info Joseph. We started harvesting the sweet stage about 22 days after silking began (August 16th and ran about 10 days). That means that it's been about 37 days as the selected seed ears were the early set ones. So if I harvest in the next few days it should be good enough. I do have seed left from last year but since our plantings are rather small, I like to add in seed from whatever nice ears I harvest to the older seed in an attempt to introduce a little bit of genetic diversity.
The Roy's Abenaki Calias flint seed I've set aside from this year will only be used if absolutely necessary. I have enough seed left from last year to plant next year's patch, plus another half patch in the future. I wish I had read Jack Lazor's book, "The Organic Grain Grower" before harvesting those ears as early as I did. A few more days might have made the situation better. As weird as the rodent damage was on that crop, I was talking to a friend who lives in Wisconsin about 65 miles away. She also had rodent damage on her flint corn this year, also for the first time ever. Really strange! Also, her corn was detasseled by deer that ate about half of the tassels. This was a first for her also. Then she was talking to another person who told her of the really strange occurance on their farm of deer eating corn tassels. We need to intercept the memos or food reviews that are going out to the deer and rodents ;>)!
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