A quick super late night post. We’re, quite literally, running out of daylight and trying to get it all done before winter hits!
We’ve been pursuing high latitude corn, against every better judgment. Corn is cheap and grown (much better) pretty much anywhere but the subarctic. But, for a grower that’s interested in growing, there’s few crops that challenge the northerner like corn.
In years past, we’ve dissected the pollination process of corn. Fact of the matter is that, in cold climates, corn doesn’t grow like it “should.” The simple gist is that the tassels and the silks don’t produce at the “perfect” time, allowing for proper “natural” pollination.
Our multi-year experiment with corn has come to the point where I think we need to harvest and contain the pollen. From here, our intention is to liberally pollinate our silks by hand.
The alternative is corn’s proclivity to produce tassels and silks at the most appropriate time. It’s unreliable and we’ve surmised it can’t be entirely left to nature. It’s not a matter of genetics, in our opinion. It’s a matter of the long-bred genetics of corn responding to cooler temperatures how it does.
We can, almost always, produce corn. That’s not the issue at hand. The matter is complete pollination. Every single silk must be pollinated. And if you know cold climate corn, you’ve likely come to the conclusion that producing pollen and “the pollinated things” sort of overlap, but also don’t.
We are going to crack this nut. But, at this point we’ve determined it requires human intervention. The natural processes work, but are (at best) unreliable. This was our “best ear” and many more were left unpollinated or partially pollinated. We know it can be better!
Our working theory is that heavier human intervention may be the key to subarctic grown corn. We are going to keep trying. This might “look good” but if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re “failing” at growing corn.
More to come in future seasons. But, we’re going to test a heavier handed “subarctic” approach to pollination next season!
