Combine corn on the cob with a burger and a slice of watermelon is a summer staple. And it’s always the best flavor chosen locally, especially if you know when to harvest corn at its peak.
Sweet corn is one of the most popular vegetables you can grow in the garden. Knowing when corn is ready to harvest is pretty easy, but timing is important to choose the sweetest flavor for ears. Here you can find out exactly how and when corn is harvested from the garden.
Varieties
There are many types of corn, including flour, stone, sweet, pop, and dented. Corn is available in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. You can even find varieties of blue, red, and even multicolored seeds.
However, not all maize varieties are edible. Some of them are grown only for decoration. For example, stone corn, which was once grown by Indians as food, is now mostly used only for decorative purposes.
For growing in a vegetable garden, sweet corn is perhaps the simplest and most profitable variety of corn. Popcorn can also be fun if you grow it yourself. However, this is a proven plant that is grown and then dried, and the quality is not much different from the options purchased in the store.
Corn grown for cornmeal is a type of field corn instead of sweet corn. Field corn contains flint, scratches and flour. Popular varieties are “Oaxacan Green”, “Noothstein Dent”, “Jerry Petersen Blue” and “Bloody Plotcher”.
When to harvest corn
Depending on the type of maize grown, the yield or expiration date may vary slightly. For example, some varieties ripen within 72 days after planting the seeds, others – up to 110 days. Be sure to check the seed packaging for the remaining days until ripeness to give an estimate of when the corn should be ready for harvest.
In addition to the remaining days to maturity, look for silk (thin, threadlike fibers on corncobs). It takes about 20 days after silk first appears on the ears before corn is sufficiently developed. The ears are ready to be picked when the silk turns brown, but the shell remains green.
The stems must have at least one ear at the top before harvesting. The ears may be less on the trunk, but they are usually smaller and not yet ready for harvesting. These lower ears eventually mature, so watch as their silk turns brown before picking them up.
Before harvesting, make sure that the seeds on the ear are in the “milk phase”. This means that when you prick a seed with your nails, the liquid inside will look milky. The milk phase lasts about 18-20 days after the silk turns brown.
If the juice in the seeds is still clean, it is not yet ready for harvest. Wait a day or two and check the pills again. If there is no liquid in the seeds, you have waited too long for the harvest.
When you are sure that the corn is ready for harvest, pick up the ears early in the morning before the sun warms the ears. Once the ears are selected, the natural sugars contained in the seeds are converted into starch, resulting in a decrease in the sweetness of corn. The warmer the conditions, the faster this process will be. The early morning harvest is the sweetest sweet corn.
How to harvest corn
The best way to harvest corn is to hold the ear tightly, peel off the shell and everything from the stem and wrap it up. The ear should easily bear fruit. At this time, the shell and silk can be removed from the plunger unless you plan to grill the pipes with the shell.
Place the harvested corn in the refrigerator as soon as possible to slow down the conversion of sugar into starch and keep its quality as high as possible. Only harvest as much corn as possible unless you plan to preserve and store the crop. However, be sure to pick up all the sweet corn in the “milk phase”.
How to store fresh corn
Like all fresh vegetables in the garden, corn tastes better when picked. Be sure to eat the harvested corn in a week when it’s sweetest. The longer corn lasts, the more it tastes like store-bought corn, because sugar has more time to turn into starch.
If you don’t plan on eating corn on the day of your choice, store the accumulated corncobs in the refrigerator in a gallon plastic bag and make sure you cook them within a few days.
To remove moisture accumulation, the hoses can be wrapped in paper towels in the plastic bag. Storing corn in the freezer is also easy and offers a lot of fun in the middle of the cold winter months when you dream of summer.
How to save corn kernels
If you want to save sweet corn seeds from this year’s harvest, let the corn ripen and dry on the stem until the shell and stems are completely leafy and brown. Seeds should be hard, dry and wrinkled.
Be sure to store at least 500 seeds to maintain the same characteristics of the plant, as the seeds may be genetically different when crossed by other varieties of corn.
You need to dry the flasks after removing them from the stem to ensure that mold does not form. There are some drying methods. One of them is to pull out the shells, but don’t remove them and use them to hang corn. Another option is to remove the shell completely and place the corn on a stand or monitor. Make sure you protect them from direct sunlight.
To remove the seeds from the plunger, move your hand with a twisted motion to remove the seeds. In this step, tools such as corn husks are also available if you have a lot of ears.
After removing the seeds while they are completely dry, store the seeds in building pots in a cool, dry, and dark environment so you can plant in the garden next year.