Sweet Corn and Wind

One of my favorite memories of summers on the farm revolves around sweet corn time.  Mom and Dad always planted several acres of sweet corn and sold it right from the farm.  The last price I remember selling it for way back when was $3.75 per bushel - about four dozen ears.  From the time I was very young, my job was to take the customers to the sweet corn field and help them pick the corn. 

And then there was the eating.  There is nothing like picking a batch of corn, husking it, washing it and dropping it directly in the pan to boil.  There is no time for those sugars to begin to turn starchy and that sweet corn, hot and dripping with REAL butter, tastes like heaven.  So, it's no surprise that there is always an ample amount of sweet corn in my home garden.

I plant at least four different varieties - one very early maturing, two mid-season maturing varieties that I use for canning and freezing, and one late season variety to extend that little bit of heaven just a bit longer.  Yum, yum, yum.  I can hardly wait.

Corn on the ground



Imagine my dismay, though, when I looked out at my garden after a fast moving, violent thunder storm that clocked 60+ mile per hour winds on Sunday evening.  There was not a standing stalk of corn in sight!  Every single one of my beautiful corn stalks was laid flat on the ground.  I have been involved in corn growing every single year of my life and have never seen a field or garden plot where not even one stalk peeked even the least little bit up from the ground.

I believe this happened because of a combination of factors.  We have worked a lot of organic material into that garden plot, so the soil is very loose.   Corn does not have a very deep root system to start with, and this year the roots are more shallow than most.  This is probably related to the rain we had during its peak growth time - the moisture was abundant so the roots didn't need to seek very far below the surface to find the moisture they needed to grow.  Those two factors, combined with driving rain that washed some of the soil away from the roots and the wind that did the rest, laid my corn crop pretty low.



Corn rejuvenated



When it comes to sweet corn, we are not ones to give up easily, though, so last night my husband and I were out there trying to salvage our corn crop.  We started by driving steel fence posts in several places along the length of the corn row.  Then we carefully lifted the downed stalks and set them upright.  We threw away any that had damage to the stalk itself, but most had simply been lifted out of the ground by their roots.  We replaced the soil around the roots and packed it in tightly.  Then, we strung medium weight rope tightly from post to post on either side of the corn to hold it upright.  After that, we went to the house to have a cold beverage and hope and pray that there will be no wind or driving rain for the next few days.  That will give the roots time to reset and hopefully be better prepared to withstand what Mother Nature brings their way from now until harvest time.



And let's hope it stays that way!