THE CORN CONTEST
Each boy was to take a certain number of hills of corn in his father's corn patch. He was to select his seed corn after a few suggestions given him by The Chief. These hills of selected corn were to be cared for by the boy himself, but it was perfectly legitimate that the soil be prepared for him, since most of the boys were to plant in their fathers' cornfields.
In the growing of corn the first matter for a boy or girl to consider is the selection of the seed. Corn should be selected carefully by the individual stalk; that is, choose ears from stalks bearing an ear or ears at, or a little below, the middle of the stalk.
The stalk itself should be thick and free from suckers or any evidence of disease. The ear should be cylindrical. The kernels should be deep setting, uniform and compact. Then the cob should not be too large. Look at some samples. See how some ears have too large a cob, others too small, while still others show a right amount of cob.
The butt and tip of the ear should be well filled out. Look for a perfect ear. The kernels are uniform in size, in even rows, with only a slight space between rows. See the tip and butt. Very little space is lost at the butt. You have seen ears where the butt was all space.
There is still another sort of corn. It might be called mongrel. Any one can raise such corn. Good care shows in corn as good breeding does in boys and girls.
One more point the boys were told to consider in selecting seed ears, that was the relation of the circumference of the ear to its length. An ear should have a fairly large circumference at the base and taper toward the tip. To estimate relation of circumference to length, which should be as three is to four, measure the ear one-third the distance from butt to tip. So if the ear is eight inches long the circumference should be about six inches.
All the boys but Jack and Myron tested their seed corn to be sure of its vitality. Peter went a little further than the other boys. He not only tested for general vitality, but he tested for vitality among the ears he had selected as good seed ears. This he did in the following manner: He chose twenty-five ears, and used four kernels from each ear. First a soup plate was filled with sand. This was moistened by dropping a little water on the sand. Sand must not be too wet for this work. He partitioned off the sand-bed into rows with cardboard between them. On the cardboards was marked over each row of four kernels the number of the ear from which they came. The sand was moistened each day. Peter worked out from this the best ears for quick germination.
The next point to be considered in corn culture is that of the soil. Soil for corn should be mellow and fine. If it has vegetable matter or humus in it, then its value as a corn-growing soil is increased. Fertilize well and plough, or if the plot is small, spade. You ought to have surely eight inches of good, mellow soil. In planting corn place five kernels in a hill. You will remember that a hill means a place. For corn which grows high make the hills four feet apart; while for the low growing varieties place three feet apart. Cover the early varieties with one inch of soil; the later varieties with one-half inch.
As the corn shoots begin to appear every boy should appear with his hoe or cultivator, for one secret of good gardening is constant cultivation or stirring of the soil. Water, as you know, rises in the ground and coming to the surface evaporates. Now the point is to keep the moisture in the ground for the plant's food supply. So if one keeps stirring the soil he makes a layer of earth which stops the water as it rises. We call this a mulch.
When the shoots are six inches high choose the three finest little corn seedlings in the group of five. Pull the others out. The reason for putting in five kernels in the first place, instead of three, is that some may not come up. And, too, some that do come up may be poor and sickly.
Myron did a very stupid thing. At least he called it stupid. Some one sent him a packet of seed popcorn. Myron thought it would be pretty interesting to raise some and supply the club with popcorn at its meetings all the next winter. Now Myron did not know that from the corn tassels the pollen when ripe or dry blows all over the corn field. This pollen falls on the silk of corn plants anywhere in the field. The pollen fertilizes the plant and the ear of corn sets and grows. Because the pollen being light is blown to such distances and because different kinds of corn can interpollinate, is reason enough for not planting different varieties of corn in one patch.
Myron's popcorn and sweet corn fertilized each other and he got a corn which was a cross between the sweet corn and popcorn. He learned a lesson of pollination, but at the expense of the corn crop.
One may plant early and late corn in the same patch but otherwise he should stick to one kind of corn.
The boys in the fall were to submit twelve of the finest ears they had raised. These were to be scored or sized up as follows:
| NAME OF CONTESTANT _____________________ | VARIETY OF CORN _______________ | DATE OF PLANTING _________________________ | |
| (1) Ear: A. Trueness to type | 10 10 | 20 | |
| (2) Filling of: A. Tip | 10 10 | 20 | |
| (3) Kernels: A. Shape | 6 12 6 6 | 30 | |
| (4) Measurements of ear: A. Length | 10 10 | 20 | |
| (5) Proportion of Corn to Cob: | 10 | 10 | |
| Total | 100 | ||
This score card needs a little explanation. Take up (1) Ear, first. All the twelve ears presented ought to be much alike; that is, like the type or parent ear you are striving to produce again. So if, out of twelve specimens, six were fine ears and the other six were rather poor, then surely ten credits or points could not be given. The shape of an ear should in general be tapering, well rounded a little below the centre, and tapering not too abruptly toward the tip.
The second point is the Filling of the Tip and Butt. The tip should be filled with even, regularly arranged kernels. It should not be too pointed nor too blunt. The butts should be covered over with kernels except where a deep, clean-cut depression is left. Here, as in the tips, the shape has to be considered, for flattened and blunted butts are bad form.
As to Kernels, they should be uniform and well-shaped, not only on the single cob, but in all the specimens. The furrows must be uniform, regular, and with only a slight space between. To determine depth cut a square inch right out of an ear. All kernels should be of one colour. If a red kernel is in with the white then there has been an intermixing. All kernels on all ears ought to have the colour of those of the type form.
Not only should there be a proper proportion between Length of Ear and Circumference, but an ear may be too long. The usual length of ears is from eight to twelve inches, according to variety.
We have spoken of cob-relation before. This cannot be determined accurately by your eye but must be done by weight; so shell the corn, weighing the ear first. Now weigh the cob. The difference is weight of corn. Divide the weight of the corn by the weight of the ear. This gives per cent. of corn. For the exhibit the boys afterward used half their samples submitted and reckoned per cent. on this. The proper percentage of corn to cob should be 86 or 87 per cent. You can easily find out if you come up to standard.
Myron brought in some corn merely to show his mistake but of course did not submit any.
Jack, you will remember, did not test his corn and results showed this. Out of his twelve samples there were two good ears. The others showed many changes. The poorly filled tips, irregular rows, and wide space between rows—all these scored against Jack. George's corn was thrown out because black kernels were found here and there in with the others.
Albert's and Jay's Peep-o-day came out in fine shape. But Peter's Country Gentleman after all had the record. Philip dropped out of the race because he went on a summer vacation. So for a slight amount Peter took over Philip's corn hills.
That fall the boys made very careful selection of seed corn.
"After all," Myron said one night at club meeting, "although Peter's corn was the only really fine specimen, I think some of the rest of us got fully as much out of the corn contest."
"So do I," added Jack; "and I, for one, shall test corn after this."
"I think our corn was pretty good," Albert went on in a half-injured way; "but we are going to beat that record next year. We shall rotate our crop, planting our corn where the beans were this season. That's a thing fellows ought to know; that it's a mighty good thing to rotate crops."
"What's that?" asked Philip.
"Rotating crops means not always planting the same crop on the same piece of land, but changing every two or three years. It happens that beans are very good to plant before corn. They do not take from the soil, The Chief says, what the corn needs. So a piece of soil planted to beans gets in shape for corn planting another year. It would not be well to plant corn on a certain piece of land more than two successive years. Then something else should be planted on this land and the corn put somewhere else."
"Good!" said The Chief. "Some day we shall discuss rotation of crops more fully. There are no end of topics for us to work over this next winter."