{"id":832,"date":"2015-07-26T00:52:17","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T04:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/?p=832"},"modified":"2015-10-15T10:34:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T14:34:55","slug":"2015-veggies-july-corn-pollination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/?p=832","title":{"rendered":"2015 Corn Pollination"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"_MG_0561_Veggies_2015_07_03_sm\"<\/a>
Gathering corn pollen, early July<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We read up about pollinating corn. We saw the male flowers maturing on the tops of the stalks. With our small setup, we decided to hand-pollinate to ensure the corn cobs would fill out a full set of kernels. You only have a few days in which to do this, and a couple of hours each morning within those days. We placed some aluminum foil around the stalks, under the male flowers, in hopes of collecting some early morning pollen.<\/p>\n

The foil seemed to work. We used a little paintbrush to collect pollen that had fallen into the makeshift foil cups, as well as from the male flowers themselves. Some pollen also lands in the little cup-shaped scoop where the upper leaves branch off from the stalk.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0558_Veggies_2015_07_03_sm\"<\/a>
Trimming cornsilk to make pollination easier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We gave\u00a0the female flowers (corn silk) a haircut to make pollinating them easier.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0574_Veggies_2015_07_03_sm\"<\/a>
Gathering corn pollen, early July<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We gathered the pollen onto the brush…\"_MG_0563_Veggies_2015_07_03_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…and brushed the pollen onto the female flowers, trying to hit every single strand of silk.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0564_Veggies_2015_07_03_sm\"<\/a>
Pollinating the female flowers, or cornsilk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We could see that the grains of pollen had stuck in all the right places.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_0573_Veggies_2015_07_03_sm\"<\/a>
Pollen grains on cornsilk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This task was so timing-specific that we did the best we could, but felt as though not 100% of the silks would end up pollinated. In the end we did get some corn cobs out of this, but as I suspected, the soil nutrients and available sun were not enough to provide us with a real bumper crop. Corn is a heavy feeder, so regardless, I would probably not want to grow it every year so as not to deplete the few nutrients that I do have.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2749_Veggies_2015_07_26_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once the cobs are harvested, a nice chunk of space opens up in the garden for a new planting. We sowed bush beans where we pulled up the corn. We’ll try corn again in a year or two!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We read up about pollinating corn. We saw the male flowers maturing on the tops of the stalks. With our small setup, we decided to hand-pollinate to ensure the corn cobs would fill out a full set of kernels. You only have a few days in which to do this, and a couple of hours … Continue reading 2015 Corn Pollination<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,11],"tags":[106,17,99,98],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-75","category-vegetables","tag-corn","tag-gardening","tag-urban-agriculture","tag-vegetables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fivefurrow.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}