Gardenbite: Harvesting Sweet Corn & Two Common Sweet Corn Pests | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and it is summertime in Illinois. And I got my first social media post saying that sweet corn is ready. Homegrown Illinois sweet corn is something to behold. Now if you're growing your own sweet corn, on today's Garden Bite, we are going to jump back when Katie and Ken were teaching me all about growing sweet corn.

We're gonna talk about when to harvest and a very common question I get, how to keep the raccoons away when the corn is just ready to pick, and also what are those things eating the tips of your sweet corn. You won't wanna miss this if you are a sweet corn lover. Enjoy. So, Ken, when do you know sweet corn's ready to pick? Because I imagine right now it's sizing up.

And, you know, do you have to after it's done milking, do you have to then is there another? Is there is there like a a fruit juice stage? What what's next? How do I know when it's ready?

So one way you can go out you can go out and kinda squeeze the ear, and it feels kinda full. That's pretty good indication. This the silks will start drying up. So kinda think about the sweet corn you buy in the store. That's one way pretty much with any vegetable think about what it looks like when you buy in the store.

And it's usually a good indication of when you want to harvest that silk will start drying. The ear gets kind of full. And I'll usually, when stuff starts getting to that stage, I'll peel back the the husk and and pop a few kernels and see if it's in the milk stage or not.

Okay. Now I've heard a good sweet corn, you can just eat that without having to cook, boil, whatever. It just you know, you shuck it, take a bite. It should be just as tender and juicy as it is if you would throw it in a microwave. Is that true?

Does that or should I be cooking my sweet corn?

I've eaten it raw. Our kids have sometimes they're picking it up, they just eat a ear while we're picking. So Yeah. We've all lived to tell the tale.

It's it's e I know it's easier to spread melted butter on a hot ear of corn, but I just if it's good, it doesn't need butter,

I think. Exactly. Pre pre melt your butter and just dip it in there.

Who needs to invent a Cobb Sai, like, shaped butter dipping dish? Okay. So if you you've got it picked. Like, Ken, you had mentioned you you eat it almost right away. But should so I I have it picked.

Do I need to do something? Do I need to shuck it right away? Do can I keep it in my kitchen counter with the it's still, you know, fully clothed and it's it's it's corn clothing? How do I store this?

So a little bit of that's gonna depend on the type of sweet corn you're growing. So there's kind of three main types, the standard super sweet and sugar enhanced, and those are abbreviated s u for standard, s h two for super sweet, and s e is sugar enhanced. So your standard, that's kind of like your old time sweet corn. And that stuff starts the the kind of the quality, the sweetness starts declining rapidly. So usually that stuff you pick and cook right away.

You wouldn't wanna store that more than a day. Otherwise, you start losing a lot of that sweetness. The super sweet and the sugar enhanced, those can store a little bit longer, several days if you needed to. It's it's still probably best to, in general, just cook it right away or use it kind of that day, just to be safe.

Okay. Well and then Katie, you had mentioned possibly being able to preserve corn. What what are you and Matt thinking about for this year? What's what's gonna be the the way to get corn in the middle of winter?

Yeah. There's nothing better than sweet corn in winter. So we've been, we just cook the corn. We pretty much blanch it, and then cut it off the cob, and then put it in, freezer baggies to freeze it and hopefully enjoy this winter.

Yeah. It it sounds like a pretty simple process. You know? My mom, she's done that for years. Yeah.

Easy enough.

And then you know it at, like, Christmas time or somewhere, you know, some holiday gathering, there's a stew that's made, and you can tell there is fresh, frozen, but fresh locally grown sweet corn mixed in with A very common story I am told is that people will be they'll have this beautiful block of sweet corn. They know it's getting ready. Maybe they're gonna go pick it on the weekend the next day, and they come back and raccoons have beset that block of sweet corn, and they are stripped, torn to pieces, and gone. Ken, you said not you said you didn't have any maybe remedy for squirrels. They're evil animals anyway.

Nature never intended them to evolve this far. But the the raccoons, Katie, or deer, you know, do you and Matt have these issues? Any any solutions or ideas?

Luckily, we live in town, so we don't have a lot of issues with, like, the deer. Raccoons, we see one occasionally, but knock on wood, they've left our sweet corn patch away or left it alone. But a lot of times, you'll see, like, people put, electric fence, usually a couple wires around the base, to keep raccoons out. With deer, you could do the same thing, but you're obviously gonna have to do it up a little bit higher because the deer can step over something that raccoons wouldn't be able to. So this a a lot of times, it's electric fence.

Peggy Doty told us I don't know if you guys recall, like, talk radio usually keeps raccoons away. So if if you don't have access to electric fence, that could be an option. Just keep a a radio on top radio, throughout the throughout the night for a few nights around, when you would expect your sweet corn to be ripening. That might be a tactic to keep them away as well.

I've even heard folks, they take a piece of tinfoil, smear it with peanut butter, and put it on the electric fence so the electricity current still travels within that tinfoil to encourage animals to lick it. And when they lick it Oh, no. Yeah. They get a shock. And so it is a conditioning thing that they they even though

they potentially have some meat with your sweet corn.

That's there you go.

Poor animal.

Somebody fried some sweet corn and something else here too. So yeah. But some yeah. That might be another possible thing if you wanna, I guess, just condition your critters, pest critters to stay away. Though they want the corn, they'll go for the peanut butter first and realize don't mess with that fence.

So

Keep your pets away from it.

There you go. Yeah. Your your kids. Mhmm. Well, kids.

You know? I got shocked so many times as a kid going underneath the cow fence, so I'm still here. So, Ken okay. So corn earworm, there's been a couple local farmers that have said, come on, folks. It's not that big a deal.

Get over it. It's a what is it, Ken? What is a corn earworm? What type of insect?

It is a a caterpillar, not a moth. It's also called tomato fruitworm if it's getting into your tomatoes.

Oh. So okay.

So same same same insect causing problems on both of those. And with corn earworm, usually, you're gonna find that at the tip of the ear. It's when they land their eggs on the silks and those caterpillars will hatch and work their way into that ear corn and start feeding on the tip. And sometimes you may see like a line of kernels missing where that cornea worms travel down and there'll be frass or poop in there. A lot times, if it's just on a tip, you can cut that out and eat it.

Or if you miss it, you got a little extra protein.

Talk about meaty corn. Yeah. Mhmm. Okay. So corn or earworm, I've never seen it to be a big deal.

I'll pull the thing off. Yeah. You see the frass and the there the little caterpillar there. Just chop it off and I toss it in the grass and call it good. And if people wanted to spray something like that because it's a caterpillar, would it be something like a BT spray on your silks?

Yeah. That yeah, basically, anything that you're gonna spray for caterpillars, BT, other stuff. I think usually do that when your corn starts to silk to kinda protect that when they're when they're not laying eggs.

Well, that was a lot of great information about when to harvest sweet corn, keeping the raccoons away, and what to do about corn earworm. Well, the Good Growing podcast is production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. A special thank you to our listeners. Thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening, or if you watch us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.