Corn!

I started getting a little ansty for the corn to be ready and took one ear off that looked the most ready and it was looking good. Once the kids saw me take one off they insisted they all needed to come off. I'd been seeing more bugs hanging out around the corn so I decided to go ahead and pull the majority of the ears. As it turns out, the development of the corn really wasn't much better than last year. I had a few that were really well filled, but most of them were still just small. Still tasty though. I think next year I'll plant the rows differently and stagger the plantings by a week or so, that way the pollen hangs around longer. One of these years I'll perfect it. Until then, I think this was a pretty good haul.

My shucking helpers

This guy was stowed away and I stuck my fingers in all the mush because I wasn't watching what I was doing. It totally grossed me out. I think this is a corn earworm and I think I've had them in the past, but they ate up several of my ears this year. You can just cut off the chewed part and eat the rest of the corn if that doesn't gross you out too much. Good news is there was no stink bug damage this year and overall I had much better pollination of the lower kernels, I think this is a result of my hand pollinating but all my pollen expired before the silks were done being fertilized which is why I ended up with mostly half ears.

Those kids looooove shucking corn

We got a very large bowl filled to the brim. It was so tender and sweet. I just wished the kernels were bigger and many were not quite ready due to the kids' enthusiasm but all still edible.

Once I harvested the corn, I usually pull out the stalks and bundle and put them out to the curb but this year I'm trying something new and I just broke the stalks at soil level and laid them down in the bed and covered them with a layer of mulch. Unless my plants are diseased or severely infested with critters I intend to do this with all my plants this year. In the process I mulched over my field peas as well. I pulled some out and did see plenty of nitrogen nodules so I'm hopefully they are adding some back to the soil as they die off. In probably two weeks once the corn has died and settled I'll try to broadcast some buckwheat in that bed as a cover crop.