It’s time for another one of those “crops of passion” that we grow and it’s a really tough one for us far northerners! It’s time to lay our corn harvest out there!
We tried a new to us variety this year as part of our ongoing corn trials that we’ve been conducting. All things considered, especially a wet and relatively cool season, we didn’t do too horribly! We were able to get ears to produce on all of our plants and every ear produced at least some corn. Overall, we’re happy enough with this variety to see how it’ll do next (and hopefully better) season.
We’re clearly still struggling with pollination issues, which is why some of our ears did not fully form kernels. This is largely due to our cooler climate, where the plant plant produces tassels well before the silks develop. The silks are those little strings in corn and pollen from the tassels have to touch every single one of those strings to make each kernel! We pollinate our plants by hand, but we think a lot of our pollen is simply spent before the plant fully produces their silks. We’re still not quite sure how to solve this, other than simply wishing for better weather.
While some might judge us by “corn country” standards, that’s not at all the space we’re playing in. Clearly, our corn isn’t even in the same league as those fine, golden ears you can get at the grocer. There’s lots of folks who might question the value of trying to grow a crop like corn at 65 north. We totally hear you! We very likely put far more into time, effort and even actual cost than our harvested corn is actually worth!
But, on the scale of authenticity, all that farm grown corn doesn’t hold a candle to what we have here!
Having a little bit of home grown corn allows us to add it into other home grown recipes and it’s completely ours. We can 100% call it Alaska grown! The authenticity of our food does matter to us a little bit, and so does the challenge of growing it. It’s pretty darn easy to pay a buck an ear at the grocer or to pick up a bag of frozen corn. It’s not so easy to sow, grow and harvest your own in the subarctic!
You see, at a certain point in gardening, it’s good for the experienced gardener to set themselves up for a challenge. It’s helpful to try things that you may very well completely fail at. Doing hard things keeps us far away from arrogance, from ever achieving a point where we start to think we’ve got it all figured out. We often talk about it, but failure and challenge in gardening are some of the best teachers and both will ultimately make you a better gardener!
Anyway, we’re tickled pink with the harvest we did get. And, we have a delicious and very special thing we’re putting it into, which will last us for quite some time. We’ll share that project with you in due time, but for now, we wanted to show you how we fared with this challenging crop this season.
