Re: [gardeners] Bastrop county gardening and stuff
Allen Merten (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Fri, 3 Mar 2000 03:04:19 -0600
Hi Penny,
Sweet Corn has been improved so much in the last 20 years or so. Dent
corn has had great improvements made to it in the last 50 years. The old
open pollinated dent corn varieties would have a single ear per stalk. Some
stalks would just be fodder, no ears at all. Some stalks would have only a
nubbin or two.
My grandfather would be amazed if he could see the modern corn
varieties. We have a belt of blackland farms on the back roads from Bastrop
to Round Rock. The grain farms are the kind that stretch from the roadside
to the horizon. I marvel at the low number of corn stalks that are not the
exact height of thousands and thousands of others. The Milo fields are the
same way. My grandfather's corn and Milo fields were a mixture of heights.
Grandpa's fields were harvested by hand not by machine. Judy gets a kick
out of seeing the mechanical harvesters and pickers shooting the cotton,
corn, Milo, etc. into trucks and trailers.
Allen
Bastrop Co., SE Central Tx.