Hello Everyone Today we are harvesting our corn…. or not….. it depends if its ready,
so how do you know if it ready. In this video I’ll show you
some of the signs you need to look out for to see if the corn is ready to pick.
Corn is trickier than other type s of crops since the corn is hidden under the husks. A tomato or cucumber or pepper grows out in the open
and its easy to see whether its ready or not, corn is a different story.
If you pick the corn too early then it might not have reached
its full sweet potential, and if you pick the corn too late,
then all the sweet sugary goodness will turn to starch. So how do you know when its just right? I planted two varieties of corn this year, in this bed is the Early Golden Bantam variety, these were started indoors in cups of soil with drainage holes at the beginning of May while the weather was still cold outside.
These produce a golden yellow kernel and have a nice sweet taste,
if you know when to pick it. The seed packet said these would be ready
approximately 82 days after planting, but you can’t just count 82 days and hope for the best. In this bed
I planted Early Sunglow Hybrid, this is ready
approximately 68 days after planting and can yield two 7 inch ears per stalk.
The two varieties of corn look different, you can see the tassels at the top
are more purple on this corn, and closer to a cream color on this corn.
The ears are also different, the ears of corn with the purple tassels
are smaller, and their silk is also closer to a purple color, the corn with the cream
colored tassels are larger, and the silk is more yellow than purple.
So how do you know when to pick the corn? Well one clue is in the silk.
Around 20 days after the silk first appears,
the corn should be ready. Here are three things
you should look for in order to determine
if the corn is ready to pick: 1. Watch for the silk to turn brown,
once it turns brown the corn should be ready to harvest.
The silks start to turn brown once they’re pollinated,
more about that in a minute, but this still doesn’t tell you
if the ear is ready yet…. so lets move on to the second clue….
which is to 2. Feel the ears of corn,
you should feel the seeds inside filling out.
The seeds will feel plump, they fill out starting at the stem end
and working up to the tip where the silk is. Sometimes the seeds
don’t completely fill out until the end,
but the corn can still be delicious even if it has not fully filled out.
So the feel test can tell you a lot about
if the corn is ready. And third…
Pop one of the kernels, it should squirt out a milky substance.
If its watery then the corn isn’t ready yet.
But wait… before you pick the corn,
make sure you have a pot of water boiling,
assuming you’re going to cook the corn and not eat it raw,
which you can. But if you’re going to cook it,
get the water boiling first, then go out and pick the corn.
Once corn is picked, the sugars in the corn
begin converting into starch, so its best to eat the corn
the same day its picked. If you can’t,
at least put it in the refrigerator to slow down
the process of the sugars converting to starch.
Each stalk should produce one ear of corn, but sometimes
you do get two depending on the growing conditions.
Corn gets pollinated differently t han other crops that produce
male and female flowers. Each stalk has a tassel at the top
that contains the pollen. When the wind or animals shake the plant,
the pollen from the tassels falls down onto the silk and pollinates it.
That’s why its helpful to grow corn in a block with other corn
so that there is a better chance of all the corn silks being pollinated.
Each strand of silk represents a kernel of corn,
if a strand doesn’t get pollinated, that kernel of corn doesn’t grow
and get nice and plump. Some gardeners shake their corn plants
to make sure the pollen is dispersed, but you can do more than that if you want to.
You can pollinate the corn by hand, just snap off a couple of tassels
and brush them up against the silks. I had my two varieties of corn in separate beds,
but still close enough that there could be cross pollination.
If this concerns you then just plant one variety, or plant the two further apart.
So to sum, the corn is ready
when the silk is brown and dry and the corn looks and feels like its filled out.
Then boil the water and run to pick the corn,
then run back to the boiling water, and soon you will be enjoying
nice sweet delicious corn! If you pick the corn
and find its not ready yet, then don’t pick any more,
watch and wait a couple more days to make sure the ears feel full
and the silks are brown and dry. Or visit your local farmers market
to get fresh corn. I think we can all agree,
nothing beats the taste of fresh picked sweet ripe corn.
Thanks for watching…Bye!
