Making Sweet, Sweet Corn: Hand Pollination

This is the first year I am attempting to grow corn. They say corn is one of the few crops to drastically improve in flavour with genetic modification and strategic cultivation. I had a $20 for $40 Groupon for Broadway Terrace Nursery, so in mid-May we took a house trip to the plant store. We found a few gems that day, not the least exciting of which were the peaches and cream corn seedlings. There were twelve plants in all, which is considerably fewer than they say you need, but I of course didn't know that at the time. So we went ahead and planted our corn in a three sisters planting with french round squash and congo watermelons and blackeye peas.

*Quick tangent about the three sisters planting: you probably want to use a vine squash instead of a bush variety. The point of interplanting the squash is to have to creep around the base of the corn and protect it from critters and rodents. That doesn't really happen with bush varieties, like the french round squash we used, as all of the squash grow along a central stalk. Once ours grew to be about 5ft in diameter, it promptly tipped over from the weight and grew into the corn. A you can see below, the plant is now stunting the growth of the very corn plants it was meant to help (right) by stealing all the sunlight and forcing the corn to grow at odd angles. The ones planted with the watermelons (left) are much happier.

Once I looked into growing corn and found information on how many rows were suggested for good pollination, I decided I should probably get some more corn in the ground and quick. I had some yellow sweet corn seeds from my purchase from Victory Seed Co., so I sowed another dozen seeds the following week. At this point the yellow corn, which gets less sun then the others, is about knee high. The peaches and cream corn on the other hand is 6ft tall and starting to do corn things.

Tassels have been forming for a couple of weeks, and now silks have started to emerge as well. Since it's become clear that the corn from seed won't be catching up (and even if it did, I've now realized I would be cross pollinating the cultivars - corn can both self and cross pollinate), I decided to look into hand pollinating the corn.

Turns out the process is simple enough. The pollen develops on the tassels at the top of the plant. Usually, it is blown through fields and onto the silks that develop on the ears-to-be along the stalks of the plants. Alas, I don't have enough corn to be able to rely on the accuracy of the wind. So to hand pollinate the corn, you gently bend the tassels into a paper bag and give the stalk a good shake. Once you've collected enough pollen, sprinkle it on all of the silks, being careful to get as many silks as possible. Each silk is connected an individual kernel that needs to be pollinated to form correctly. If you've ever had corn on the cob and noticed a shriveled kernel or two, this is due to poor pollination.

Corn tassel and anters (flowers)

Silk protruding from the husk

Today I completed my first pollination attempt. I plan on repeating the process every couple of days in the hopes of increasing the chances of successful plant sexy times.

Everything's Coming Up Milhouse!

DudeLife did such a great job of caring for the garden while I was out of town, that when I came home, I was able to immediately harvest all this awesome!

And that was to be the last of the fava beans. As it turns out, they are kind of a bitch to grow. Not that they seem to be picky about where I put them or how often they get watered or even who their neighbours are. The problem with favas is how much garden real estate they require and how many plants you need to yield a crop worth messing with.

There they are up against the fence, early in the season and reasonably sized.

I planted probably 10-ish fava bean seeds, and as they grew up and out they engulfed all of the neighbouring plants. And then every time it rained, the stalks would fall over from the weight, and I'd be stuck trying to figure out what was up versus down and how the hell to stake the buggers well enough to help them keep to themselves. When I returned home from NY I had had enough of the spider and caterpillar haven they were creating, so I harvested what was ready and pulled out the plants.

This about halfway through the growing season, before the falling over.

The beans were delicious, don't get me wrong. But a couple of bags of favas (which is certainly more than I was getting per harvest) yields barely a small bowl of shelled beans and I am damn sure I could have planted something there that would have had a better output for the real estate. I think next year I am going to try edamame, and increase our growing space by netting at least one side of our fence for vertical plants to grow up.

In other garden related news, we have our very first tiny tomatoes finally growing! As I got such a late start with my seeds this year, it's good to see my little guys finally setting fruit. These first tomatoes are on the Riviera plant in the garden, which was the first of all the 'maters to flower, so that makes sense.

By that logic, the Flamme should be next, followed by the Black Krim, the Pink Ping Pong, and lastly the sad little Super Snow White that was decimated by a vicious bird attack. Another exciting thing I noticed is how different the Black Krim flowers are from all of the others. These ones are much larger, with more of a sunflower-like appearance than the usual star shaped flowers. Peculiar. But ultimately, I'm sure, delicious.

Regular ass tomato flower.

Big ass Black Krim tomato flower.

Musings from the 718 (Mostly Fish Poop Related)

I went to New York last week and good lord is it hot over there. Living in the Bay Area, I had almost forgotten what it means to have real seasons. While I was off drinking and sweating my balls off in Brooklyn, I had to designate someone to look after my beloved garden. DudeLife was the obvious choice - he lives in my house and has been listening to me jabber on about caring for the plants for months now. My instructions were pretty simple. Water every other day in the evenings, twice a week for the citrus trees. Weed if you feel like it. Harvest anything you want that is ready and try not to kill anything. I will update soon on the state of our garden (hint: happy!), but travel has pointed my mind in a couple of different directions, so enjoy this pretty hibiscus flower that opened this morning and I will ramble my way to fish poop.

Whilst melting in the 718, I had the opportunity to check out a few community gardens and see what my pals are growing in their shoebox apartments. Everyone and their mom is growing big leaf basil, probably because of its preference for the hot and humid. Tropical trees and vines are super happy too. Right around the corner from Mr. Bluntz's apartment there is a sweet little community garden with corn and tomatoes and peas, and an ornamental garden and a chicken coop a few blocks further. Not exactly something I would have expected in that part of Bed-Stuy but really exciting to see.

The Bartender is apparently about to go balls to the wall with aquaponics, which is a method of growing without soil, that uses fish poop for nutrients and a whole lot less energy than conventional farming. No wasted water, no weeds, no bad microbes in the soil.

All of the Bartender's talk about raising tilapia got me thinking about the Kijani Grows site I pass by twice a day during my commute in Oakland. They have a nice big plot of land that always appears to be in the middle of a massive overhaul, but never seems to get anywhere. I've been trying to find a good community project to get involved in, so I'm thinking about getting in touch with them. They hold classes on aquaponics monthly and are currently working on a number of programs in my community. I know they don't grow in the soil there due to lead contamination, but there are organizations working on nullifying the lead with fish bones. All of this is exciting stuff, and I think I'm going to find a way to get involved.

The Tale of the Vermi-Ghetto Compost

Today is a glorious day. Today is the day I get to write about worm poop! I have yet to kill off the thousand worms I purchased a couple of months back. This is one of my crowning garden glories, because I pulled this vermicompost system out of my ass and so far so good.

I started with the green waste bin that formerly belonged to my last apartment, half filled with soil. Why did I put soil in there? Because I needed to move it from one house to the next and was too lazy/not strong enough to dump it (maybe 300lbs) when I got there. And this turned out to be a VERY important part of my plan. If I had dumped it all out, I never would have been able to just reach in and grab the castings. But I'm getting ahead of myself - we don't even have worms yet in this story, let alone poop for the grabbin'.

I did some research into the pros and cons of different kinds of composting, as discussed in my previous post, and decided worms were for me. I bought my pound o' worms from Victory Seeds for $25 when I was purchasing some veggie seeds. Opening the box was exciting to say the least. I got a bag the size of a large grapefruit that appeared to be filled with soil. Until I looked more closely. The soil was wiggling! Yeah! This was great news because worms are a bit temp sensitive, and getting a bag of dead worms would be pretty depressing. So, Step 1: Acquire Red Wiggler Composting Worms, check!

I'd started saving our kitchen scraps (no meat, no dairy) in anticipation of the worms arrival. It is important to get them into their new home and feed them immediately after opening. How hungry would you be after two days in a tiny box, dealing with post office BS, smashed up against a thousand of your closest friends and family members? For reals yo. If you don't feed them they will try to escape, or at the very least will crawl up to the condensation on the lid of the container. You gotsta lure them in with a tasty treat.

After gently breaking up my ball o' worms into the compost bin, I added a nice layer of shredded paper bags from my local beer store and put the food scraps on top. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am, that's pretty much how we got started.

A few weeks later we drilled holes in the side of the bin beneath and above the soil line. Worms are needy like all other organisms, and require air of all things to live. The nerve. Anyway, probably should have done this part before getting the worms, but meh. There is no use crying over milk that could have feasibly been spilled, but is still sitting in a glass on the counter.

One of the first problems I encountered with the Vermi-Ghetto Compost was how to harvest the castings. I had worms wriggling all over the damn place, and it gets pretty old pretty quickly to have to pick all the worms out of the castings you want to use. one. by. one. Turns out the solution was pretty simple though! I've started feeding the lil dudes on just one side of the container, and keeping their bedding on the same side. After some weeks or months or however long it takes the worms to eat through most of what I've fed them, I just switch to feeding them on the other side and all the worms come a runnin' like peer pressured lemmings. I give them a few days to make the trip, and make sure to toss any unfinished bits of food to the new location. Then I'm free to dig about with reckless abandon, not worrying about committing worm genocide. I've been using the castings for about a month now :D

The last point I want to make briefly is about location. Worms don't like to be too hot or too cold (oh great, now this is playing on repeat in my head. shoot me in the face). We originally had the bin against the fence next to the veggie garden where it was getting a bit toastier than desired (4-6 hours of direct sun). Thankfully, Dude Life (as my male roommate will be referred to from now on) had a day off last weekend and I was able to get him to move my 300lbs of worm poop to a new, shadier location on the side of the house next to the Lazy Potatoes.