When it comes to the sunflowers, it looks like we’ll have a few Hopi Black Dye seed heads that will fully mature, but I wasn’t expecting much from the Mongolian Giants.
Then I took a closer look at one of the largest heads.
This is only about a third, maybe a quarter, of the size it should be, and yet there are maturing seeds in here!! There are so many developing and opening seed heads still, too. I don’t think there are any other Mongolian Giants like this one, with pollinated and maturing seeds in them, but while looking at them this morning, I did see some bees fluttering around, so who knows what will happen? It’s been such a strange growing year, there’s just no way to know anymore.
Some sad little peas among some sad little corn! This is the sweet corn block that is doing the worst, and yet they are still trying to produce little bitty cobs! We’ve got the most pea plants growing in this block, though, so at least this area should see the most improvement from their nitrogen fixing capabilities.
And we’ll even have a few peas to harvest!
The Montana Morado corn – what’s left of it – is being left to go to seed, and a few of the cobs have uncovered themselves. Which is helpful, since it lets me see how the seeds are maturing and drying on cob. A fair number of peas interplanted with them have been managing to grow, too. Not a lot of pods developing, but I’m seeing flowers around.
When it comes to the corn, I find myself waffling back and forth over whether or not we want to try growing them again next year. I still want to get Maize Morado seeds to try, and maybe we’ll do the Dorinny Canadian hybrid again. It’s hard to guess how much better the sweet corn would have done, had we not had drought conditions. The soil is nitrogen depleted, but we did use a water soluble, high nitrogen fertilizer on all the garden beds, a few times over the summer, plus were able to amend a bit with the purchased garden soil.
Is it worth trying the sweet corn again? I really love corn, but until we are able to improve our nitrogen depleted soil, is it really worth it?
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
My vote is to try corn again! 😊 Hopefully growing season next year will be better. Just my opinion, I love corn too!
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I certainly hope so. Corn takes up a lot of space, though, and we won’t be using where they are planted now for corn again, so that means breaking new ground again.
Aside from the few cobs we got from our own garden, I haven’t eaten any cord at all this year. Like everything else, the price has gone up on the grocery store, and it is a “treat” food that we get only after the staples have been purchased. Another reason to try growing it ourselves again!
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Corn is notoriously hard to grow. I’d switch to something else. But I’m a quitter.
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LOL!!
My mother grew corn here every year, and never had issues – but then, she also saved her own seeds, so whatever type it started out as, it was well hybridized to our zone!
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