Health & Fitness
Growing Corn Can Be A Challenge!
Everyone loves to eat corn. Outsmarting birds, raccoons and chipmunks requires creativitiy.
A customer told me about a farm in Easton where the birds are bold this summer, descending on rows of corn and munching away before the farmer has a chance to pick them.
In an e-mail to CSA subscribers and fans of their farm stand, the farmer wrote that in addition to "battling a really devastating drought" ... "The birds are not frightened off by anything. Even the farmers who use the air cannons are not seeing results. They pick at the top of the corn, tear it apart and move onto the next. Our losses are really high for the amount of work we've put into growing it."
We feel badly for our fellow farmer, and fortunate that our corn is coming in well this summer and is most sweet and delicious. But the story of our fellow farmer made us think of the strategies to keep pests away.
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One method that John and I both thought of was to take tin foil strips, and clothes-pinning them to runs of string set up along the rows of corn. The light reflecting off the foil — even in the moonlight — frightens off both birds and racoons, who both LOVE corn. You can also go to the restaurant supply store and get the disposable tin pie plates, punch holes in them and string them along the rows of corn. This is also a good way to keep the deer away from your garden.
To protect your tomatoes, we recommend an ingenious solution one of our customers taught us. Take your old pantyhose and fill them with coffee grinds. Hang them to they're nose level to a chipmunk, a couple inches from the ground, and when they dry out, squirt them a waterpistol to dampen. Our customer tells us the chipmunks are going after the tomatoes with a vengeance.
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Here's another timeless way to keep the birds away. Put mineral oil in an eye dropper and put some drops in each tassle of the corn. It's harmless to animals and people, but keeps the birds and raccoons away.
It you're not growing a lot of corn, you can always put a paper bag — not plastic — over each cobb. Farmer John's father used to have a cap gun he'd fire to scare away the critters from the corn.
