THE BONNEWITZ GARDENS, VAN WERT, OHIO 
I wrote to the farm advisor in Imperial county, just directly 
east and across the mountains from San Diego county and I imme¬ 
diately received a reply. “Don’t bring your sweet corn here, for it 
is so hot that it will burn the pollen.” I found later that black Mexi¬ 
can sweet corn is the only successful sweet cornforthat hot climate. 
Next I went up to Los Angeles county, where I was told the 
weather was too damp and foggy, and that while I might grow 
some sweet corn for sale as green corn, and succeed in saving part 
of it from the ear worms, yet, in the extra time necessary for ripen¬ 
ing it, the ear worms, which never freeze in California, would make 
the commercial seed crop very hazardous. 
Testing Aunt Mary’s and Aunt Nancy’s Sweet Corn seed for fertility in March, 
1935. Three grains, taken one from each end and one from the middle of the 
ear, were planted in individual squares in the seed bed, and each individual 
square was numbered to correspond to the number on the ear from which the 
grains were taken. Over a thousand ears were tested in each single planting. 
Fortunately for me, all the farm advisors in California were 
spending the entire week at the Agricultural College of the State 
University in Berkeley, where they were meeting with the superin¬ 
tendent and all the specialists of the state experiment agricultural 
farm. Good fortune was with me here also, for my friend, Henry 
Washburn, is the farm advisor for Santa Cruz county. I wired him 
to invite all the farm advisors of all the counties where corn could 
be grown, to take lunch with me on the following Wednesday, and 
he did his work so well that at our table, we had the President of 
the Agricultural College, the Superintendent and the corn expert 
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