Weekly Update: Storm Damage

On our way to a birthday party yesterday we got caught in a big rain storm.  The rain was coming down so fast and so heavy the windshield wipers were barely able to wipe it away.  Some cars even pulled off to the side of the road to wait the storm out.  Once we arrived at the party some people reported getting hail!  Hail?!!

We were worried about the corn.  How would it hold up to such fast and heavy water drops falling from the sky?

The answer: not well.  Many of the stalks were beaten down to the ground.

We spent a lot of time tying stalks to some bamboo rods we used in last year's garden.  With the air being thick with humidity, it sure made it a hard job to do!  We wonder what real corn farmers do.  Would they go out and try to fix their stalks, or do they wait and see what will happen to it?

When we were done with the corn we decided to check up on our vegetable garden and found two beautiful cucumbers! We washed and peeled one, sliced it up and added just a touch of salt.  It was delicious!!

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Weekly Update: Growth Almighty!

Measuring stalks is becoming tricky -- some of it is as tall, or is taller than us!

Bloody Butcher still continues to be the best growing corn for height.  Golden Bantam and Ruby Red have the best seed to stalk ratio.  We were really impressed with our newest, Ruby Red, having grown a full 2.5 inches since we planted the seeds last week! (see picture on right).

Earlier this evening we watered the corn since we haven't gotten much rain during the week. Some of the corn was watered by hose, the rest by bucket since our hose cannot reach the stalks in the back.  Since we were using buckets, we decided to give all the stalks a little bit of Miracle Grow fertilizer for the first time.

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Popping Movie Ticket Prices

Last week our Mom brought us and two of our friends to the movies.  Before going, Mom's friend suggested she buy the movie tickets at the local AAA branch.  So she did.  She paid $6.75 per ticket.

We arrived at the theater and Mom looked a little pale.  Had we not gone to the AAA first to get the tickets, she would have had to pay $10 per ticket.  Mom saved $16.25.  Since we had lunch just before arriving, we skipped the popcorn.  Later Mom said that was a good thing because a small bag would have cost an arm and a leg.  

We took out our movie stubs from last year and we were amazed.  Last year it cost $7.50 per ticket.  That means they're $2.50 more per ticket now. 

What does this have to do with corn?  Based on news reports, a man named Richard Gil, an economist, (someone who studies the production, distribution and consumption of goods) says to expect movie tickets to pop even higher -- all because the price of corn is going up.  Corn is needed for fuel, food additives, and for popcorn that allows theaters to keep ticket prices down.

In the Sunday, July 6th, Parade magazine we get in our Sunday paper, it reports movie attendance is down.  Mom bought enough tickets from AAA for us to go one more time this summer, but after that we're going to wait for the movie to come out on DVD.  Maybe by then some of our popping corn will be ready to harvest!

Corn Free?

We went grocery shopping with Mom one day and asked her if we could buy some corn on the cob.  She said no, that by the time we were done shopping we'd have more corn in our basket than we would know what to do with.  We were confused; they don't have corn on the cob in all the aisles! 

Mom told us to read the labels of the different items we wanted to buy.  We found she was right!  We found corn products in almost everything we love: hotdogs, sour pickles, lemonade, roasted peanuts, chocolate milk, and even in our ketchup.  We found it harder to find items without corn in it!  Mom said this makes us educated customers, and now that we know, our challenge is to try to buy as few products as possible with corn in it.  She said we should try going "corn free" for a day to see if we can do it.  We wonder if we can; as we looked around the store, that might not be possible!  Give up ketchup?  Oh, that will be hard to do!

According to this Missouri website, over 4,200 items in our local grocery store has some sort of corn in it.  The website claims it's even in toothpaste!   We checked ours, but couldn't find a list of ingredients on the tube.  We will have to check the next time we go grocery shopping with Mom, and we'll ask our dentist when we see him next week. 

The website says corn is in fireworks too!  We wonder, when we were celebrating the 4th of July, watching the fireworks burst in pretty colors high in the sky, were we really watching corn?  And if we were, wouldn't it have been funny if it popped like popcorn? 

Reaching High: Weekly Results

We were a-maized today to see how tall Bloody Butcher has grown. It's getting to the point where we'll start needing our parents help to measure it.  It grew 22 inches in the past week!  It is the tallest corn in the experiment so far!  

Along with taking growth measurements, we are also keeping tabs on how many stalks there are from week to week.  Keeping records of our stalk count shows that Bloody Butcher, Japanese Hulless Popcorn, and Strawberry Popcorn are showing a slow decline. 

We believe we found evidence of why:

This poor little stalk (pictured on the right) has been munched on nearly down to the ground!  We wonder if it's perhaps skunks -- you can smell they've been around the neighborhood.  Pheuuuuu!!  

 We decided to finish planting our marigolds, and finish putting red cedar mulch down.  Hopefully that will help ward off our pest, whatever it is.  The mulch will help the corn retain the water, helping it grow.
  
 Since the Heirloom Indian corn was a complete failure, we decided not to try regrowing it.  Instead, in it's place we will be planting Ruby Queen Hybrid -- it's a sweet corn that has red kernels.  It only needs 75 days until harvest.  We'll see how it does.

Jones'n on the 4th

Yesterday we celebrated our 4th of July by visiting the Jones Family Farm located in Shelton, Connecticut. For as long as we can remember, we have always come to this farm to pick berries on the 4th of July, and we love it! There is nothing better than biting into a freshly picked juicy strawberry!

Last year we heard loud booms -- what we thought were firecrackers being shot off in the area. But we were told that they have a cannon that they shoot off at regular times. The reason they do that is to frighten the birds. Frightened birds tend to leave their crops alone. That's good, because the strawberries are super delicious and we really don't want to share them with the birds!!

We have an Uncle that owns a little cannon, but we don't think he would lend it to us for our corn field, or that our parents & neighbors would appreciate hearing big booms everyday for the rest of the summer.  That's OK.  Right now birds are not a problem in our corn field.  It's those with hoofs and paws that we need to concentrate on.  

When we got home from strawberry picking we looked in on our garden.  We're going to get some interesting results when we go out there to do the official weekly measuring!

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The Superheroes are Coming! The Superheroes are Coming!

We're really excited!  Mom ordered our Superheroes -- 13,500 of them!  And we can't wait for their arrival because turning them loose is so much fun!  Last year, in our small garden we let 3,000 loose.  But 13,500 of them?  WOW!!

To help pass the time in awaiting for their arrival, we found this cool puzzle to solve: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.davies6010/ladybugs.html

We also asked Pop to check around his work and see if they have any bubblewrap they don't need.  We're thinking of recycling it by anchoring it around the outside of our corn field to see if it spooks those corn stalk-eating villians.