Sweet corn, melons, and tomatoes, part 1

A couple of years into the farm experiment, Farmer Bill started planting melons and sweet corn. He's also experimented with tomatoes, peas (shelling peas, peapods, and sugar snap peas), and probably a few other things I have blocked from my memory.

Our strawberry fields have a rotation. The first year is the development year. We plant the plants and tend them - weeding, pulling blossoms off so they put their energy into growing strong plants, not fruit. Years two, three, and four are picking years. We try to keep the weeds and insects and diseases at bay and pick the fruit in June. At the end of the fourth year, the plants are tilled under and weed control done for the rest of the summer.  The entire next year the ground lies fallow - maybe planted with a nutrient-rich cover crop for plow-down. OR, you can plant melons, sweet corn, tomatoes, peas, or something else in that ground instead.

One year Farmer Bill made a lot of money on tomatoes.  Several years he's done really well with melons. But he's yet to show me a profit on sweet corn.  About the only positive thing I can say about sweet corn is it makes dinner really easy: boil some water, toss in 3-5 ears of corn (1 is for me), make him a BLT and he's happy as a hog in mud.  He'd eat that meal 3 or 4 times a week with no complaints.

I grudgingly admit that the corn does give us cash flow in July & August - when we're between berry and apple crops.  And it helps us keep staff busy (and employed).  But it's a lot of work for the return. And did I mention that the return has never yet been on the positive side of the ledgers?  I've heard our farm management consultant say that he doesn't think anyone makes money on sweet corn. For a number of years I've been campaigning for Farmer Bill to quit growing sweet corn and use the time spent on it to better care for his money-making crops. So far I haven't been successful - although in recent years I have gotten acknowledgment of my reasoning - and I doubt that I will ever be successful, so I limit my comments to the very occasional & try to imbue them with some humor.

And we do get to eat some really great sweet corn, as fresh as it can possibly be.