When the kids were little, they liked the "Where's Waldo?" books. They'd be occupied for quite awhile searching for Waldo. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to find a guy in a vivid red-and-white-striped shirt. And Waldo had big, black Harry Potter glasses long before JK Rowling ever thought up the wizard boy.
Illustrator Martin Handford is a pretty talented guy.
However, I don't need an illustrator to lose Randy in the corn field these days. (See the photo at the top of this post.) On Saturday morning, we returned to our customary measuring spot. In just three weeks, the corn has had phenomenal growth. Below is the photo I took on the evening of June 7.
If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.
The corn is starting to tassel.
A corn tassel is the male flower of the corn plant. The tassel is a group of stemmy flowers that grow at the top of the corn stalk. Each corn plant will grow this tassel on top when it is time for the ears of corn to begin growing.
The silk is the female flower of the corn plant. Some of the corn is starting to silk (below). The more silks that are fertilized, the more kernels there will be per ear.
An earlier-planted field has even more of the tassels and silks showing.
Soon, the tassels will pollinate (see 2013 photo below). The pollen is what causes the ear of corn to grow and ripen. The pollen falls off of the tassel and is blown by the wind to reach the silk of the ears.
While the rain we had Thursday night and early Friday morning stalled wheat harvest, it helped the 2015 corn crop. And that's a good thing!
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We are still cutting wheat, but I thought I'd take a brief timeout on Kim's County Line to give a corn crop update.
A great year for all things green around here! (PS. Loved Where's Waldo, too!!)
ReplyDeleteRandy said from his vantage point on the combine yesterday, some of the corn was looking a little stressed from all the heat.
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