Thread: Stunted corn
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Old 27-08-2009, 11:53 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
Pat Kiewicz[_2_] Pat Kiewicz[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Oct 2008
Posts: 509
Default Stunted corn

General Schvantzkoph said:


Has anyone in New England gotten a decent corn crop this year? My

ears
are all stunted, no more than two inches long.


My earliest two corn plantings were kind of stunted, third mostly OK,
fourth, many of the ears poorly pollinated, and the last two plantings
are very late and maybe poorly pollinated.

The weather here was wet and unusually cool (though not as wel
as New England), followed by near normal temperatures but a
distinct lack of *significant* rain (plenty of cloudy days, though).
The temperatures have really see-sawed the past two weeks.
Tuesday's high temperature was in the 80's, Wednesday's high only
barely kissed 65 a couple of times when the clouds thinned out.

All in all, not a good year for corn.

Hard on the tomatoes, too. No significant disease for me, but some
varieties suffered majorly from blossom end rot.

Winter squashes suffered from a lack of blossoms early on, now
a disproportionate number of female blossoms with a lack of males.
(It's not just me noticing that; it was mention in the extension services
CAT newsletter for vegetables.)

Pole beans were doing well and have come to a screaching halt.

Very oddly, cabbage was growing taller and taller and seemingly
not planning to form heads, but finally are starting to look like
cabbages. On stilts.

It seems that this has
been a great year for fruit and a terrible year for vegetables. I've had
a huge number of blueberries and a fair number of strawberries, in fact
my blueberry buses and strawberry plants are still bearing.


My raspberries were 'meh' this spring, but the fall crop seems to be
doing really well -- peaking right now on the 'Polana,' and just starting
on the 'Heritage.'

I only had a handful of
peas,


My snow peas did really well and lasted into July, about a month
longer than usual.

I tried growing horned melons this year (started indoors to transplant
out). No fruit set. Absolutely the wrong year for trying to grow them!
Might try them again, though, as they don't seem to be attractive to
cucumber beetles and have otherwise been pretty healthy.

--
Pat in Plymouth MI

"So, it was all a dream."
"No dear, this is the dream, you're still in the cell."

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