It has been very wet. We usually get this weather in March and April. So now everything is struggling to grow in saturated ground rather than using the leftover water and adapting to the summer drought.
The sweet corn got blown down but most of it sprang right back. I replanted what didn’t come up and it’s quickly catching up to the older plants.
This is the gts sweet mix. Is it normal for it to tassel so early, or is that a result of stress? The other seeds I added in are growing more slowly but not tasseling yet.
Drowned peach tree. Only a few small leaves still hanging on. The apricot looks better. I’m going to move this into a pot, take cuttings, and hope something survives.
The water level is currently about an inch below the surface.
I moved the peach into a pot in partial shade, close enough to the house that I can keep an eye on it.
The roots looked healthy, so there’s a chance that it’s just gone dormant rather than dying completely. It had a good root system, the taproot long enough that I couldn’t get it all out.
If it has indeed gone dormant, then this is good timing.
The apricot has dropped a lot of its leaves but not all. A good portion of the bottom leaves are still green.
I need more apricot seeds. I’m down to three apricot trees, two if the one that’s struggling doesn’t make it.
This is the first year I really planted a garden at this location. Most of the annuals (tomatoes, beans, onions, corn, etc.) are struggling. Maybe the soil itself, maybe the soil saturation, maybe the wind, but my tallest tomato in the main garden is a little over a foot tall and just a skinny stick. Lots of different varieties, some purchased and some from my own seeds, but all stunted.
When wind snapped them off I put the tops in hydroponics. I planted 3 tomatoes and a few peppers in my single raised bed and those are doing great. They have fruit on them.
Very immature, but already half eaten by at least two cornworms, so I figured no loss. I’m going to dry it until it comes off the cob easily, then plant out in the greenhouse and see what comes up.
That’s unlucky. I hadn’t heard of that one, but did a little research. There is a European corn borer that has naturalized in US since long ago and there is a Western corn rootworm that is spreading through Europa. Hurray!
I think i remember having seen the European one, i’ll look for damage.
Anything known about resistant strains?
It seems the best solution is cobs that are very tightly wrapped. Of course most of the literature demands toxic chemicals. But if I find some that doesn’t get eaten I’ll certainly be growing it next year. None of the popcorn was attacked last year.
There are genetics for better “sealed” husks (obviously, there has to be an opening for the silks to pass through) that stand up to moderate earworm pressure. I almost took a picture of one in my corn patch last week. Too late, now. I don’t see anything in the literature for corn borer other than Bt, with a whole lot of concern about the pests evolving resistance to the Bt over the past 5 years or so.
Some cobs have very little pollination, although there’s no way to really tell why. Could just be bad spacing, could be heat, or a number of other things.
Next year I’ll do an entire garden section for the sweet corn, and maybe segregate those with lower pollination in the greenhouse where the conditions would be more controlled.
A couple of the cobs were immature but rotting inside the sheathe. Too much water? Disease? In any case, probably won’t survive.
A couple of small cobs that I’m not sure are worth keeping.
I think that unless the corn is absolutely amazing, I won’t keep seeds from anything that produces from this point on. If it survives the summer heat and drought to produce in the fall, I may keep a separate population.
The little i read about these caterpillars is that their population increases over the summer. One or two cobs show a lot less damage and seem quite well filled up. So maybe they were earlier or had these tight protection around them. Anyway it seems like a good starting point to get some resistance against these horrible bugs.
How do indigenous folk more south cope with these bugs, Do they grow an even wilder variety of corn?
I mean, i got some potato bugs, they seem to be attracted less to some wilder varieties i grow. Blue crosses somebody made named ‘reine puree’, queen of the mashed potato. Some other weird variety they really liked, but also they were placed in a part where was a lot of compost so they stood out and were green and lush. I pulled some yesterday. They look like this.
I know most of these would just not cope in our climates and are pretty specific etc. But in all that diversity must be something that really thrives where you are. And ok this is potatos, but same goes for corn and tomatos.
Very true. This is my first year doing the sweet corn project here. I have grown sweet corn before, mostly hybrids or the descendants of hybrids, but it wasn’t in a heavy corn producing area and I don’t remember having this problem.
All the corn has damage, just some of it is facing down in the pictures.
Sweet corn seems to be like chicken, one of those human invented products that everything wants to eat. Next year will show whether adaptation is moving in that direction, but these plants have a lot to adapt to, so we’ll see.
I don’t think it is as simple as that. Purple does seem to be fairly dominant (like also that crimsom(?) coloured), but there are also many layers to how colour of the kernel is defined. Certainly possible that it’s just simply purple that hasn’t been picked, but I wouldn’t try to guess how genetic slot macine of corn ends up with all those possible combinations.
If those are the first of the season, then that’s probably the case unless you have really alot of them. I usually do manually the first ones untill there is enough pollen coming from the whole plot.
