CHAPTER XXVIII. - 

 CORN. 



The cultivation of garden corn (or sugar corn) is far more commonly 

 practiced in the Northern States than in the South. There are two reasons 

 for this. In the first place, little attention has been paid to the breeding of 

 a sweet corn suited to the Southern climate, and the sweet corn from the 

 North, like any corn brought far from its origin, generally fails to make a 

 satisfactory crop. In the second place, the white field corn grown in the 

 South is a far sweeter article than the Northern field corn, and the people 

 failing to get good corn from the Northern sweet corn seed, have generally 

 fallen back on their home field sorts, usually planting for an early crop the 

 early corn grown in the high mountain regions of the South. Northern sweet 

 corn lacks stamina for enduring the Southern climate, and succumbs to heat 

 and drought. StowelPs Evergreen and the Mammoth Sugar are about the 

 only sorts that are moderately successful south of Virginia. A number of 

 years ago we undertook to breed up a sweet corn that would meet our Southern 

 conditions. In order to get more robustness of stalk, and stamina, we started 

 with a cross of the Learning, a Western field corn of yellow color, on the 

 Mammoth Sugar, a wrinkled white corn. We selected the yellow field corn 

 so that the cross could be identified by the color, and because the corn selected 

 was an earlier variety than the Mammoth Sugar. After seven years of selec- 

 tion of the yellow wrinkled grains, we finally got a variety well fixed in type 

 and of fine quality, which wouM give us ears for the table by the middle of 

 June. Being then compelled to move our plantation to a locality where 

 we could no longer keep it free from other pollen, we made a wide distribution 

 of the seed to farmers in all parts of the State and abandoned the effort fur- 

 ther. Whether any of those to whom this corn was sent will preserve it in 

 its purity or not we fear is doubtful. But we established the fact that by care 

 and selection a sweet corn well suited to Southern conditions can be produced. 

 The culture of sweet corn does not differ in any respect from that of field corn, 

 and it is not necessary here to go into further detail in regard to its culture. 



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