Corn (plant)

“ The Indians in their succotash taught us long ago to associate corn with beans, and they hit upon a dish not surpassed by modern invention. This delicious vegetable is as easily raised as its "hail-fellow well met," the bean. We have only to plant it at the same time in hills from three to four feet apart, and cover the seed two inches deep. I have used the powdery fertilizers and wood-ashes in the hill to great advantage, first mingling these ingredients well with the soil. We make it a point to have sweet-corn for the table from July 1 until the stalks are killed by frost in October. ”

“ In the United States, corn is the name applied to the seed of the maize plant, which is a highly developed grass plant that forms the largest single crop of the country. The seeds of this plant grow on a woody cob, and are eaten as a vegetable when they are soft and milky, but as a grain, or cereal, when they are mature. Corn is native to America and was not known in Europe until Columbus took it back with him. ”

“ Indian corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is a very beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate plant, and in a mass in a broad field, rustling, and waving, and surging up and down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon. We have as many as fifty hills, I should think, which will give us an abundant supply. Pray Heaven that we may be able to eat it all! for it is not pleasant to think that anything which Nature has been at the pains to produce should be thrown away. ”

“ The corn roots (which have, in such ground, been measured ten feet long,) will have a continuous and not a divided soil, wherein to expand and extend themselves; in which, it being loose, deep, and constantly moist, the roots will far exceed those confined to narrow detached ridges, wherein they are short and starved. It is an idle opinion, to suppose that plants spend themselves in roots. The stronger, the root, the more vigorous is the plant. ”

“ Prefer good upland corn ground, with sand or gravel subsoil, north and east slope. I plow deep, and plant large two-year-old trees, shallow, and mound up; shorten roots and branches. Cultivate with plow and harrow from youth to old age. Grow corn in young orchard up to six years, afterward nothing. Prefer a windbreak on south, west, and north, of box-elders, Osage orange, or peach. Rub liver on trees to repel rabbits, and use a knife for borers. To prune with a little saw makes the trees grow faster, and the apples grow larger, and it pays. ”

“ The husbandman plants his seed of corn. The seed dies, the little plant lives, and becomes a great stalk, with corn in the milk, and then the full corn in the ear—it could not be otherwise; the golden stalk is the higher, and must be victorious. In the forest there grow a hundred kinds of jack-grapes, small, black and aciduous, and a thousand orange-trees are there, bitter, and with acid that sets the teeth on edge. ”

“ If you were to plant only one grain of corn and let it grow until it is ripe, and then plant the seeds again which grew on these few ears of corn, and thus continue to re-plant again and again, we are told by those who have calculated it very carefully, that in only five short years the amount of corn that could be grown as the result of the planting of the one single seed would be sufficient to plant a hill of corn, with three grains in every square yard of all the dry land on all the earth. ”

“ The one crop trails to an amazing length along the ground, while the other shoots up to the height of several feet above it. When the corn is beginning to branch, the ground should be hoed once over, to draw the earth a little to the roots, and cut down any weeds that might injure it. This is all that is done till the cob is beginning to form, when the blind and weak shoots are broken off, leaving four or five of the finest bearing shoots. The feather, when it begins to turn brown and dead, should also be taken off; that the plant may have all the nourishment to the corn. ”

“ It may be that your father buys his seed corn from a seedsman. My experience is that seed corn bought in bulk contains a large number of poor grains. They probably shell the whole ear. The best farmers never plant grains from tips or butts of ears, since it costs just as much to plant and cultivate and harvest a runty corn stalk bearing a nubbin as it does a lusty, towering stalk with two good ears of corn on it. ”

“ We plant our corn in rows, generally six feet apart and from two to three feet apart in a row, one stalk in a place. At last working of corn we put in one or two rows of peas to every row of corn; the peas and corn mature at same time. When corn is gathered we gather peas enough for seed, then put in the hogs and they fatten from the peas. Some varieties of those peas will remain on the ground all winter and grow the next summer. The pea crop is worth as much as the corn crop.
Corn grown here is worth seventy cents per bushel. From sixty acres I got over 1200 bushels of corn. ”

“ This can only be done when it is designed to cultivate the corn but one way. Many fail in attempts to grow beans among corn, by planting them at first hoeing. The corn, having so much the start, will shade the beans and nearly destroy them. [Pg 61] But plant at the same time of the corn, and they will mature before the corn will shade them much, and not be in the way even of the ordinary crop of pumpkins. ”

“ Soaking without rolling in plaster is good, if you plant in a wet time; but if in a dry time, it is absolutely injurious. Once in a while there occurs quite a general failure of seed-corn to come up. Farmers say that their corn looks as fair as ever, but does not vegetate well. When this is general, there is a remedy that every farmer can successfully apply. ”

“ The fruit is a grain and the Poaceæ, therefore, are the chief source of cereals. Wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, millet, and rye, all come from grasses, and all, except corn, are natives of the Old World. They were grown for countless ages before the discovery of America, when Europeans first saw corn used by the Indians. As they are wind-pollinated, the flowers of grasses produce no honey nor colored petals, and the vast majority of them have no odor. Most of them reproduce, not only by seeds, but by rootstocks, and many of them grow so closely together that they form turf. ”

“ A kernel with a black heart will not grow.
An ear of corn has always small grains toward the point of the cob, and large grains toward the butt of the ear. When I came to plant corn, I used only the kernels in the center of the cob for seed, rejecting both the small and the large grains of the two ends.
Seed corn was shelled from the cob with the thumb; we never threshed it with sticks. Sometimes we shelled an ear by rubbing it against another ear. ”

“ No large vegetable is so generally grown throughout the country, the markets of the cities taking large quantities, and immense areas being grown for canning purposes. [Pg 174]
Seed that fails entirely is not often found, but when one has a good strain that produces early corn it is best to save some.
We generally have sweet corn to sell every day from about the middle of July until the first frost. To do this we plant every ten days from about the 20th of April to the 20th of June. Our early variety is the Peep-O'Day, which is planted about the same time as the early beans. ”

“ The grain varies in color; it may be white, yellow, violet, purple, blue, slate, black, or variegated.
A good corn ground is rich, warm, deep and mellow. Unlike the other cereals, the work of culture in the cornfield is only well begun when the plants appear above the surface. Being in rows there is a fine opportunity offered for weeds to come in and occupy the soil before the corn plants make enough growth to defend their rights to the land. The first enemy to the corn is the cut-worm, and the next is the crow. ”

“ It thus came to be applied to the small hard seed of a plant, as still used in the words barley-corn and pepper-corn. In agriculture it is generally applied to the seed of the cereal plants. It is often locally understood to mean that kind of cereal which is the leading crop of the district ”

“ Every one who can raise corn and potatoes can as easily raise, with little trouble and expense, grapes enough for a family's use. Plant such hardy sorts as Moore's Early, Worden, Concord, and Martha, in rows seven or eight feet apart, and same distance in the row, give good cultivation the first year, cut back to two or three feet in autumn, lay the short canes on the ground and hold down with a spadeful of earth. ”

“ As soon as our first planting of corn is cut up, we sow two or three rows broadcast with flat turnips, some of the strap-leaved varieties, hoeing or raking them in by hand. We continue to plant or sow some quick-growing variety of corn, peas, grass, grain, or roots, even when it is very doubtful if we shall receive any return for our time and work; but we frequently get a fair yield from our third planting. ”

“ It is green corn time and the tender ears of corn are at last ready for use. The corn plants are now as high as a man’s head and although the ears are fully formed, the kernels are tender and milky. They are still white: the brilliant colors will not appear until they begin to harden later on. Each day as the men come home from the fields they bring baskets of corn to their wives. The fresh corn is roasted, baked, boiled or stewed and great quantities are eaten when the families gather around their food bowls for the evening meal. Much of this green corn is also prepared for winter use. ”

“ A load of vegetables at Marien's ready for market.
Soil well adapted to common field corn will produce good sweet corn, thriving best on well fertilized land. Sandy soil is best for the early varieties.
Sweet corn is often grown in drills, but we prefer the hills three feet apart, as it is easier to get an even stand, and cultivating both ways will push the crop. It should be cultivated shallow and never deep enough to hurt the roots. It is well to hoe it once.
Sweet corn is one of the few vegetables which is quite free from serious injury from either insects or diseases. ”

“ Day by day it has been a wonder how the corn has thriven and grown, with what vigour the stalks have thickened, enlarged in leaf, and deepened in green. Side by side in due rank and order they have risen, the blades have extended towards one another in loving embrace, until the whole has become a solid square field of corn, the murmur of which is like the distant wash of a languid sea over a pebbly beach. ”

“ The ears are therefore not well filled with grains, and the general size of the ears do not seem in proportion to the large stalks. The white flint corn is planted here exclusively, and the same seed has been used from time immemorial, so that a change of the grain is perhaps now indicated for the improvement of the crop. Of course the corn ought to be planted separate from the cotton, and the rows being in closer proximity would secure a better result. ”

“ Sweet corn is adapted to any soil suitable for field corn, though more attention is given to manuring. A warm, rich, sandy loam is considered most desirable. On the northern limits of the corn belt sweet corn is grown as a field crop because of its rapid growing and early maturing habits. ”

“ Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures—where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. ”

“ Every fall he does through his field and selects his seed corn from the best of the earliest ripened ears; when these ears are husked one or two husks are left on each ear, and then the husks, with the ears attached, are braided together until there are fifteen or twenty ears in a string. These strings of seed corn are hung up in the sun for a fortnight or so, and then hung from the rafters in a cool, dry loft over the wood-shed; there it remains till seed time comes again, and it never fails to grow. ”

“ I have about 1,000 bushels of very choice selected yellow corn, which I have tested and know all will grow, which I will put into good sacks and ship by freight in not less than 5-bushel lots at $1 per bushel of 70 lbs., ears. It is very large yield and early maturing corn. This seed is well adapted to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and the whole Northwest. ”

“ There are several sorts of Indian corn, and of different colours; namely, white, red, yellow, mixt, &c. A small sort of yellow corn is ripe much sooner than most of the other sorts, but yields a smaller produce. White and yellow are the most common sorts, but there are several kinds of these. A good ear of corn contains from 14 to 20 rows, and from 40 to 50 grains of corn in each row. A hundred middling ears of corn will yield a bushel of clear corn. The Americans live mostly on corn-bread; the English eat but little of it. I have now growing 12 acres of it ”

“ The maize, or Indian corn, had attained its ripest hue, and been plucked from the dry stems, which had been deprived of their leaves as soon as the ear was fully formed, that nothing might screen the sun's hottest rays from the grain, and the golden-colored pumpkins which had been planted between the rows, that no land might be wasted, even left to ripen alone amid the withering corn-stalks. ”