Doug Waterer wades into the stalks dragging shoes weighted down with mud clods caused by the night’s frost-fighting irrigation.
He emerges from the tallest stand in the test site with an ear of corn, wrenches back the husk , tearing into the September morning silence, and reveals a sizable but immature corncob.
“If I’d bet the farm on this variety this year, I’d feel like a real chump,” the horticulture scientist says.
“This one has got a lot of skating left to do before it is going to be mature.”
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There are about 60 sweet corn varieties growing in this University of Saskatchewan test plot in Saskatoon. Waterer and his team are evaluating the corn, hoping their findings prevent prairie growers, from market gardeners to back yard enthusiasts, from feeling like chumps.
Waterer, associate professor at the
U of S department of plant science, gets new varieties from seed companies around the world.
Some of them are already available to growers, but others are numbered varieties that seed companies want to have evaluated before they put them in their northern seed catalogues.
“Vegetables are very much like the canola sector in that the number of new varieties that come out each year is just absolutely huge.
“It is very difficult for the growers to keep track to what is the best variety.”
The key performance factor for the Prairies is how the variety handles the short summer.
“Unfortunately with corn, in order to get early, you usually have to sacrifice something else, like quality, cob size, sugar content. It is a classic saw off.”
The university and Saskatchewan Agriculture publish results of the tests on corn and a host of other vegetables each year.
Waterer said the corn varieties can be roughly divided into three groups.
The early-ripening varieties are usually ready to harvest by the second week of August, but with so-so quality, appearance and taste.
The mid-range group is usually ready to start harvesting the last week of August or the first week of September. They are the “meat and potato” varieties with medium quality, taste and appearance.
“Then there are the gambler’s specials, where if every year you had a growing season like 1998, you are going to look like a hero. They are big, good-looking, high yielding, spectacular flavor, but they are a long shot in terms of growing degree days.”
The long shots this year didn’t have a hope.
Conditions were as bad in 1999 as they were good the year before.
The plots were seeded late and the plants languished in cool weather early in the season.
To try to get results out of long-season varieties, Waterer’s team has been irrigating the plot on nights with frost. The trial report notes varieties that need such aid to reach full maturity.
And it warns that you can’t judge a cob by its looks.
A few muddy paces deeper into the plot, a beauty emerges from the silk and leaves as Waterer strips another ear, revealing the buttery sheen of plump, perfect kernels.
There’s a satisfying crunch as he bites into the cob, but his expression tells a different tale.
“Some of the varieties are all show, no go. I’d rate that very poorly in terms of sugar content.”
Such varieties are coined “plastic,” appealing on the market shelf, but a disappointment at the supper table.
The tests go beyond taste. Also assessed are the number of kernel rows, quality of tip fill (kernels right to the end of the cob), the ease of cob removal and uniformity of ripeness.
Waterer also wants varieties that signal when they are ripe by having the silk dry and the ears droop.
“For someone trying to train workers to tell when corn is ready or to train people coming into a U-pick operation, that makes life a lot easier.”
The 1999 results are expected to be published this winter.
