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Show Sweet Corn's Top Flavor Lost Soon After Picking i I, WAKE SUCCESSIVE 4r V PLANTINGS ABOUT - 'J?t ' TEN DAVS APART TO I "St- V -. L U ENJOY A LONG 5 rZr "vi-i f& 4 'I SEASON OF SvftsJ FIRST PLANT! HO SECOND PLANTING THIRD PLANTING PLANT CORN IK k " SQUARES TO .STifeS-i ' " -" POLLINATION. UW 5 5 a , NOTE THAT EACH , a iVSAV2i' KERNEL HAS ITS B . " 'X-Vij? CORRESPONDING - m - 'xSyXS?gg J For the finest sweet corn make successive plantings of your ! favorite variety. Only the home gardener, who can sink teeth into an ear of ! sweet corn within an hour or I less after it is picked, really knows the supreme tenderness and flavor ot this American fa-; fa-; vorite. Loss of favor begins at the in-, in-, stant it is picked. Chilling can slow this down, but nothing can stop it, except popping the ear into boiling water as soon as possible, pos-sible, say from 5 minutes to half an hour after picking. Varieties of sweet corn differ . much in sweetness. When you : find a variety that pleases you, : the best way to enjoy it is to i make several sowings, spaced so i that they mature one after the ' other, prolonging the season of ; your delight. : A patch of sweet corn in a : space fifteen feet square in nor-: nor-: mal weather should yield ten ; dozen ears. This is approximate, : of course; each stalk bearing at ; least one far, and some of them : bearing two. Hybrid sweet corn is gradu-: gradu-: ally displacing open pollenated ' varieties, though many home : gardeners continue to grow the : latter. The harvest season of a : hybrid variety is usually short-: short-: er, and while the ears are larger and the yield heavier. Most hybrid hy-brid varieties are disease resistant, resist-ant, and more vigorous growers than open pollenated kinds. To maintain a continuous sup-i sup-i ply of one hybrid variety more frequent sowings should be made. There are some advan tages in sowing at the same time several different varieties, of varying maturity dates, in order to produce a long Harvest. This practice also extends the pollenation period of the planting, plant-ing, and lessens the danger of failing to fertilize the silks, which may occur in unfavorable weather, when one hybrid variety va-riety is grown alone. A sowing of sweet corn should be made in four short rows rather than in a single long row. This insures that when the pollen is ripe, a cross wind will carry it to the silk in the young ears of an adjoining row, rather than wasting it on the ground, as might be the case in a single row. Each silk must be fertilized by pollen, in order to produce a kernel, and .many failures with corn are traceable to poor pollination. pol-lination. Seed should be sown when danger dan-ger of frost is over, about two inches deep either in continuous drills or hills. In drills, sow three or four seeds to a foot, later to be thinned out to six inches apart for dwarf growing varieties or a foot apart for tall ones. Space the hills two to three feet apart in the rows, according to the size of the variety, and for both drills and hills, space the rows two to three feet apart. Deep cultivation of corn must be avoided because the plants have shallow roots; but all weeds should be kept down and the soil stirred, to break its crust, until the plants are hall grown. |