Sweet Corn Ripe 331 



Golden Bantam. This method of hybridizing seems to 

 strengthen the good points in the strain and to produce seed 

 which resists drought and excessive hot weather better than 

 the original variety did. 



The tender sweet corn cannot be planted in the spring as 

 early as one plants the field corns. Once planted, it must suf- 

 fer no setbacks of cold and damp. But the crop matures many 

 weeks before the field corns can be harvested. The ears are 

 ready for pulling eighteen days after the silk appears at the 

 ends of the immature ears. For canning purposes the growers 

 let the corn wait another two or three days before taking it to 

 the factories. 



Even in the corn belt, where the prices for sweet corn are 

 less than they are in New England, an acre of sweet corn will 

 bring the farmer about the same amount in dollars as that 

 acre planted in field corn would yield. But the sweet-corn crop 

 is ready money, whereas he may have to wait months before 

 he can get a good price for his field corn. Too, sweet corn 

 does not exhaust the fertility of the soil as the other corns do. 

 There seems to have been a scientific reason behind the Mexi- 

 cans' feeling that after the ears had been formed the corn 

 needed refreshment and more food to bring the grain to per- 

 fection. We know that it is in this period that the corn makes 

 its greatest demands upon the chemical properties in the soil. 

 Sweet corn, which is harvested before the kernels complete 

 their development as seed, is therefore less demanding of the 

 earth. 



In the World War, there was an American flyer whose 

 plane was brought down in flames and who escaped with his 

 life but not without terrible facial injuries. He was in a base 

 hospital for many months after the Armistice was signed. His 

 physician and nurses knew that his slow recovery was due to 

 the fact that he felt that a man as injured as he was had noth- 

 ing to live for. In France, among thousands of wounded and 

 disfigured men, he might pass almost unnoticed. But not in 

 Kansas. 



