Duct Tape Corn

Now I don’t believe in exaggerating and I am definitely not one to give into bragging or hyperbole, but I can say in all humility that by late May my sweet corn was light years ahead of anyone else’s in the state. By Memorial Day weekend the farmer’s field corn was only ankle to knee high despite having an exceptionally early dry April planting spell; I had been keeping an eye on all the gardeners and they were at about the same stage. But my corn… my sweet corn was as tall as me, fully tasseled, had yellow silks and ears. I had planted early and covered it with newspaper during a frost. My goal with my whole garden was to get as much plant growth up as early as possible so that when the insect hordes hit, my garden would have enough foliage and be far enough along to take a good hit. I am using natural pest controls not so much because I am environmentally conscious as that I am cheap and lazy. I felt that planting early and getting out ahead of the insects and Mother Nature’s surprises was worth the risk. Besides, for a small gardener like me (and unlike a commercial farmer) it would cost relatively little to buy seed to replant. So by Memorial Day, all I had to do was to wait for the yellow silks to turn brown and I would be eating sweet corn.

Everything looked so dandy I decided to go fishing…bet you saw that coming! After a couple days of relatively good fishing I checked back on my corn patch. All of the silks on my first planting had been eaten back by beetles to the husk. I raced to pull out my organic gardening guidebook. Yes, beetles sometimes do this; no silks, no pollination, no corn; the ears would not fill out. Simple translation: you’re screwed; try again next year.

Had I been slam dunked by Mother Nature again at the last minute? I decided not to go down without a fight. I went out to the patch and pulled back the husks on every ear of my first planting, exposing the tip of the cob and another two inches of golden silks. I grabbed my trusty roll of duct tape and tore off two inch pieces that I held between my fingers like a man preparing to roll a cigarette; I pulled my other hand across the tassels and dumped the pollen beads into my duct tape cigarette and wrapped it around the newly exposed corn silk. If those beetles were going to get these last silks, they were going to have to eat through duct tape to do it!

The following Sunday, after church I told a farmer buddy who sings in choir with me what had transpired and asked for his advice. I’m one who believes in picking an expert’s brain. As he listened politely, he was grinning broadly on the outside so I knew he was guffawing on the inside.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone do that before; it’s interesting how people solve problems. When seed companies want to pollinate corn, they put the pollen they want into a small paper bag and then staple it over the ears they want pollinated. Each bead of pollen has about ten thousand grains of pollen on it. You might try that.”

When I got home from church that Sunday, I went to have another look at my corn. I noticed that the silks on my second planting of corn—planted a couple weeks after the first-- had not had their silks eaten on, so maybe this silk-eating phase of the insect’s life was over. I pulled all the duct tape off my first planting and pulled handfuls of pollen off the tassels and mixed it into the now again exposed short silks. I do not know if it was the duct tape pollination or the later hand pollination that worked, but I do know that when the kids came home Father’s Day, we ate buttered corn on the cob, cucumber and onion slices marinated in sweet vinegar, a green bean/new potato and sausage entre and a cherry cobbler dessert baked from the cherries that we picked from our trees and scoops of vanilla ice cream we bought at the store.

Now I’m not one to exaggerate or given to bragging but…FRANK NELLIS-ONE; Mother Nature-ZIP!