Friday, June 28, 2013

Corn, Already?

I was really surprised when I was walking through the corn and squeezing the ears that I found some ready to be pulled. I figured another couple of weeks at least.

This year we planted a sweetcorn called peaches and cream and as you can see it is not worm resistant, but I am use to that as long as they leave me some.We tried all the natural ways to keep the worms out, but so far nothing completely works except engineered corn or harsh chemicals and we don't use either those. 
We just cut the ends off then process the rest, no big deal.

This first harvest round will already be enough to feed us for several meals and we have a couple more rounds to go. We do not grow a huge crop of corn, just enough for about fifty meals for two people. I guess we could grow more and make our own cornmeal and all that, but that is a lot of garden room I don't have and a lot of corn to grow.
For every pound of cornmeal, it takes about 50 square foot of garden space. That's about a 7'X7' plot. If you are wanting to store fifty pounds of cornmeal for the year then you would need about 2,500 square feet of corn. That is about a 50X50 plot of corn. For some that's not a lot, but for my space it is.

Plus, some of the corn never makes it into the house. It seems like every time I walk through the gardens I graze, sampling whatever I can find. I really love fresh husked corn eaten in the garden.

Before I go,
I wanted to welcome Mike Marlow to the Modern Day redneck family. This guy has a great looking web site with a large amount of information. So if you get a chance please run over and check out Mike Marlow's Family Preparedness & Survival Blog
 

6 comments:

  1. I'm guessing you actually planted peaches and cream sweetcorn and not cookies and cream. We plant peaches and cream variety all the time and like it. It doesn't prevent worms but we just cut off the ends and eat what's left. I've always thought it was the best tradeoff between tasting sweet and being easy to silk. Candy corn varieties are sweeter but much harder to silk.

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    1. Haaa, Ed, you are absolutely right. I went back and changed it. I guess I had ice cream on the brain instead of corn.
      Next year we are planning on trying Hickory King Corn or maybe even the Rocky Road variety. LOL

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  2. I'm not a huge corn eater, but Peaches & Cream is my favorite!

    Thanks for mentioning my blog, I appreciate the kind words! :)

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  3. Those look great, how do you keep the coons out of the field. This year the coons got most of ours. We have tried alot of different things but always have to share the corn with them...

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    1. Thanks Sharon,
      We don't have a coon problem around here, (knock on wood). Our biggest problem is grasshoppers.

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