Filed under: Corn, garden, harvest, Minnesota | Tags: Agriculture education, Corn, farm, Food, garden, harvest, Minnesota, sweet corn
Now that corn tassels are out and the silks are fully expressed, farmers start to wonder what kind of a crop they will be having. A first hint is usually the sweet corn harvest. Since sweet corn is harvested in the “milk” stage, it is harvested early in the life of a corn plant. Sweet corn also seems to move quickly from pollination to harvest in a few short days. This is not always an accurate test, but it gives us a hint. My mother harvested her first sweet corn today, so we got a peek at the future.
The ears seem to be well formed with a minimum of missing kernels that can appear when hot dry weather accompanies pollination. One of the ears did have about an inch and a half of un-pollinated cob at the end which I snapped off. The other had less than half of an inch. A little cob that is showing is not bad. It is when there are large areas of cob showing that we worry.
For this area of Southwestern Minnesota I would say we had a very good early pollination. We will have to see what shows up when the later ears are harvested.
Michael
