Corn + Ammonia Nitrate = Shazam wizbang bang boom!

[CrealCritter]

After eating a bunch and giving a bunch away, here's our take for canning.

I'm shooting for 20 pints to pressure can

Probably tomorrow I'll go through and pull the rest of the ears for the chickens and turkeys to eat.

 

[CrealCritter]

Recipe/directions

Results, 20 pints (all jars sealed)

This concludes this year's sweet corn harvest.

It'll be nice to crack open a jars this winter. Warm it up in a pan with some butter. Good stuff.

 

[GettysburgGarden]

Yeah about 20 bucks, my experience is it's good for 2 seasons of gardening. Although it's hard to tell what if true or not because there is so much conflicting info on the internet. Those pro and cons and all points in-between. If your soil is low on nitrogen, supplementing with high nitrogen fertilizer is a good solution at least it is for me. Of course natural / organic would be best but my garden it pretty large and that would be a ton (literally) of chicken poop to spread out, which is totally unfeasable for me.

Really interesting stuff here, great site. Doers not dreamers. Yeah the first year the soil cracked, looked like a dry riverbed.. we use a 1/4" screen mesh to work out the gravel and have used straw tilled in the soil in the fall along with some lime.. we are now seeing earthworms and genuine organic properties. People have no idea the years that go into getting soil correct for sustainable gardening. Our first year was still Ok we had the topsoil mixed in, it was the 2nd and 3rd which were the challenge. We toss everything in there from egg shells, (lots of controversy there) but fine with clay, gypsum, coffee grounds, any and all organic trimmings.. for compost. If we need dirt in the yard we pull from it, and then replace with quality organic replacement.. even the cow manure sold at lowes has a high sand ratio.. so really we focus on the soil. We watered once all summer but are getting flooded in PA this year. We'll get a second crop of beans, chard, and beets.. I let the fall beets go into November, the Swiss chard will last the winter, be the first thing up in the spring.. I use that as an indicator for soil temp and planting.. On the eastern shore of MD they spray nitrogen to kick start the corn when they plant. On a mountain if you don't terrace it all ends up downhill. You have to also terrace to keep water from collecting in a clay pan and going anaerobic. At the bottom gravel and have a clean slope. We truly farm on a mountain. We also use allot of pavers and grow vertical.. we use the planting cloth and surround with bricks to keep the ground moist, we do all our squash and cukes like that now. We get good years and bad years tomatoes, too much water this year (for real). We always have enough for table/salad/sandwiches but getting enough to truly can.. on and off. The soil is still too pebbly to do carrots... grow ugly carrots up here.. But I'll post the last beets this fall, and they will be stellar. The first couple years we cutout Spackle bucket bottoms and did tomatoes, did ok It keeps getting easier, fence better.. soil better.. it's a hobby and keeps us connected to the earth around us. Thinking about trying to grow in bales, just looking for some at a good price.

 

[CrealCritter]

I'll get another picture of my sweet corn tomorrow it's tassling already.

Here is a pic of my patch of indian flour corn this evening, after weeding.

This indian flour corn going to get YUGE! Its only starting it's 4th leaf stage and already some of the leafs are as long as my arm and a good 3 foot tall. Man I think you could use these leafs to roll up tamales their that wide and long.

The strange thing about this Indian flour corn is - I've done nothing to it at all but pull weeds out from around it. It hasn't fallen over like my sweet corn has, I haven't side dressed it with any fertilizer, I havent watered it and it's very healthy looking and huge. Perhaps the easiest corn I ever grew so far.

 

[CrealCritter]

Grand daughter

in sweet corn

In okra

Next to flowers

 

[CrealCritter]

Ole corn / bachelor button flowers sure are pretty this year. My daughter in-law was just admiring them and labled me "Mr. Green Thumb" because I can grow pretty flowers. Boy is she easily fooled... Little does she know these flowers are a cake walk to grow, I don't do hard to grow and I only plant them for japanese beatle control.

 

[CrealCritter]

We just a toad choker thunderstorm roll through. My daughter text me this.

 

[CrealCritter]

I dug up a few "legs" this afternoon while tackling those dock plants. Like one of those roots are not bad enough!

Back to the start of this thread, I bought some plant food "with horse manure" the other day and after reading I should sprinkle it around my plants, soaked it in the watering can instead and watered everything but the lawn with it. (The "food" looks too much like my hens' layer pellets and they are all over the garden.) That, with the heat and wonderful, wonderful rain we had got the corn going crazy now

Awesome !!! Our sweet corn will be done here shortly it's been in tassle about 2 weeks now. The Indian flour corn is growing tall with no sign of tassle yet thankfully because I wanted to avoid cross pollination of the two.

 

[CrealCritter]

Looks like I just might get some okra off these huge okra plants after all. That is if I can get to it... I may need a machete, it's a freaking jungle in there.

And finally after I took care of this green bean plant eating machine, it looks like I'll be picking green beans soon too

 

[CrealCritter]

Silly bunny!

Silly bunny was a sly bunny. The little machine eat a whole row of green beans. It took a good week of going out in the early evening with my shot gun before he made an fatal error. He would see me and take off, evening after evening we played this game. I changed the game and came in from a different place. He didn't see me, eventhough I was a good 50 yards away I aimed anyways, pulled the trigger and bunny fell over. I checked him for worms by running my hand up his back to feel for bumps. He didn't have any, so I skinned and gutted bunny he looked clean on the inside, now he's chilling out in the deep freezer. Waste not want not I guess. I would have preferred not to have to shoot him but I couldn't just left him eat all my green beans either.