A8

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

If you like to do crafts, make wreaths and generally pretty up your front door and garden area for those great fall events like Thanksiving, Halloween and the general harvest season, you likely purchase ornamental corn at your grocery store or market. But you can easily grow it yourself, and more and more companies are offering seed varieties to get your started.

Enlarge Photo

Photo Contributed

Growing ornamental corn is fun and enhances decorations for the fall season.

You grow ornamental corn for crafts using the same procedure as regular corn on the cob. As long as you have some spare space in your garden, you can incorporate a corn crop. The minimum amount of land needed is three rows of about four feet in length.

And you need three feet between those rows. So much space is required because corn needs room to pollinate and it does that with pollen from its tassels. You don't have to grow the entire patch with ornamental corn either.

You can divide it half and half with some to eat fresh and some for harvest decorations. In our Metro Moncton area, you most often see yellow corn growing and occasionally white corn, because some consider that very tasty. Corn also comes bi-colour with both yellow and white kernels.

There's also a broom corn, which can be grown for thin, strong stalks that are dried and tied at the end of a stick to make a broom. Popular in pioneer days, it has fallen out of favour now. Another specialty corn is tall stalks, grown for its talk stalks obviously, and capable of reaching 20 feet in height.

Plant any corn in full sun and a rich garden soil. The seeds should be in rows, about one inch deep. Long-time gardeners often plant two seeds close together and then thin out one if both grow. This makes sure no space is loss if a seed fails to germinate. Water well after planting, and then again two to four days later if it has not rained.

One common mistake that gardeners make is to try to transplant a corn plant if there is a gap in the row. Don't try this because it rarely works. Be sure to keep your corn patch well weeded in the early days and place mulch between the rows to keep the weeds down.

To control corn earworms if they become a problem, some people apply a couple drops of mineral oil on the silk. Apply it after pollination. The mineral oil suffocates the earworms. And you might want to put up a scarecrow since a lot of birds, especially bluejays, really enjoy snacking on your crop.

Corn plants sometimes develop a fungus, which has the appearance of a black-ish, purple-coloured glob. If you see that, remove and destroy the plant before it spreads. Make sure you put the plant in the garbage, not in your compost pile where it will continue to live.

It's time to harvest your corn when the kernels have filled out. The closer that you can pick corn before eating, the better and more flavourful it will be. Another trick is to harvest corn in the morning, since it is sweetest then. You can tell the corn is ready for picking when the silk has dried and turned a dark born.

If you aren't sure, pick an ear you think is ripe and, without pulling it off the plant, pull back the husk to expose the tip of the ear. If it isn't ripe, close it back up again and tie it with a twister from a bread bag to seal out the bugs.

Fresh ears of corn can be boiled or grilled. Just soak the ears, husk and all, in a bucket of water for a couple of hours. Then cook it on the grill, turning regularly. When it's done, pull off the husk and enjoy it.

```

For your diary:

Sept. 6 - Seminar at Corn Hill Nursery - Creating fall colour in your garden. If you want more colour in your garden in fall and even winter, the gardening experts will show you an array of perennials, shrubs, vines, conifers and trees to accomplish the task. The session is free and runs from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. There is no charge, but pre-registration is necessary. Call 756-3635.