The Aftermath

After Monday’s much needed, much appreciated 1 ¾ inches of rain…we encountered a new problem. The heavy rain came with a LOT of wind. The corn went from tall and beautiful
to flat and matted.


Tom was hoping that it would stand up on its own, so we left it for a while. As the soil dried, the plants became somewhat more stable, but they didn’t stand upright. While I was in town getting supplies, he spent the better part of two hours going through the corn patch, stepping along the side of the plants, tamping the soil down so the plants would stand straight again.
As the soil was still very muddy, this only worked to some extent.

When I got back, I spent another two hours tamping down the other side of each plant,
in hopes that this would make them stand upright once more. It was slow, painstaking work in the heat of the day. But, corn plants must be upright for pollination of the ears to take place. If the tassels are not above the forming ears so that the pollen can fall down on the silks, you won’t have corn.

When I finished, the stalks were looking fairly good. We both decided that we should have gotten the corn thinned out, and maybe we would have avoided the problem. It seems that some jobs just fall through the cracks sometimes. This year it was thinning the corn. Next year, that one won’t get overlooked.

However, it looks like we got the corn back on track. Now, we just have to hope we don’t have any more wind storms before harvest.


We did get another 5/8 inch of rain after the straightening project, and the corn is still standing. Whew!

This place definitely takes a good deal of teamwork!