 Sayre coordinators. The topic for this session is sustainable sweet corn production and our speaker is Sayre farmer rancher grant recipient from a few years ago, and it's she's going to be talking about the people sweet corn production And I'm Larissa from Warren County in southwestern, Ohio All right welcome and like I said, I'll be talking about my research in sustainable sweet corn production Can you all hear me? Okay at this volume? No, this is my project number in case you all have any questions about it afterwards you can look it up on the Sayre website So it's just a reference thing So first I'll talk about my personal background I'm a student at the University of Kentucky. I graduated in May 2013 with a bachelor's of science and sustainable agriculture Then I started last fall to work on getting my master's of science and nutritional sciences I am the co-owner along with my younger brother of the community family farm CSA It's a vegetable CSA and we focus on mostly supporting our customers through fresh local produce and we also provide farm partnerships with people who raise eggs and Thieves and pork and also also honey and my mom and I made Jams and jellies with local fruit and all those things are extra for sale We started doing that a couple of years ago Because people said they wanted to have like a one-stop-shop sort of deal instead of just getting the vegetables from us So I'll talk a little bit about applying for a Ceregrant These are things that I thought would be useful and helpful for people who are thinking about maybe applying for a Ceregrant First you have to think of your idea. Once you think of your idea Make sure that that idea is meaningful to you It's interesting to you as well as to your community because part of Ceregrants is an outreach component So if it's interesting to you and meaningful to you also make sure it's meaningful to the communities So that outreach is a good part of the project Then you need to research the idea on the Cere database to make sure it hasn't already been done Especially in your region if it's been done maybe in New England or Florida Then it's a little bit different because the climate is so much different here But try to make sure it's unique Make sure what you're what you're gonna be doing is using the money in a resourceful way Also, I would suggest seeking help from someone who's already written a grant trying to find someone from a university And if you have a college bag nearby or an extension agent, maybe they've written a grant I worked with one of my professors Dr. Krista Jacobson She writes a lot of grants and I just felt that it was really helpful to go in with my idea and with the proposal and I said this is what I want to do But I've never written a grant before and I was a junior in college and I just said what how do I even start and she Helped me work through the process and I thought that was especially helpful Coming from someone who's successfully written several grants I also contacted my regional chair coordinator Alan Sundermeier and He was very helpful because he made some suggestions to the proposal and said these are things you might want to think about before you submit it to the committee to review it and Outreach is key They really like to see a lot of outreach to show that you're sharing your results from your research with the community with other Farmers so that this research can be applied to many other applications My project purpose the purpose was to see which method of Sweet corn production would be most sustainable Basically in my area The main problem I saw was that of the white corn that was chosen to grow was mostly silver queen and Silver Queen has a lot of issues with the fungal disease smut And so because of this people were losing a lot of Production and yields to this disease and I just felt that there had to be another white corn Sweet variety that people would enjoy eating as consumers the growers could also feel was a realistic choice So then I thought to have like a double randomized trial where I could do The heirloom varieties versus hybrid varieties and the hybrid varieties being my control because that's what most of people in my area grew Then I would also have the organic versus the conventional so that I can see Again the conventional being the control because that's what most people in my area do and then see if the organic was really a viable option for farmers in terms of money and output and based on soil results That I've done through soil tests So my hypothesis was that the heirloom corn would be better received by consumers and more resistant insects I also thought the conventional corn Practices would be more practical in terms of time and cost Farmers often times they're pushing their budget limits They're doing a lot of work themselves so they don't have a lot of time And so I thought that those would be things that would end up more in favor on the conventional production side So these are some of the project and I tried to put a lot of pictures throughout this so that you can sort of see how things were going And then if you think of any questions, you're welcome to ask throughout the Presentation or you can save them to the end just your all preference So these are some of the major tasks that I had to do during the course of the project So I started with ordering the seeds and then I didn't find which areas on the farm We wanted to plant the land that I use was my parents farm and I just wear this for a vegetable CSA So I just took part of that Um Then I had help with from my dad and my younger brother was preparing the ground I planted the corn and then when You know, I didn't feel that enough of the population came up for the amount of seeds that I planted that I would replant certain patches Just by ripping out a patch and then replanting it all together Then we fertilized harvested counted yo data insect data disease data And that was mostly just observational just like how often did this patch get the disease that it's spread to the other patches? We did put the organic section on a different area than the conventional section In hopes that it wouldn't affect one or the other These are tools that I used We did part of the Cerebrant budget I bought a backpack sprayer so that it when I was spraying the herbicide on the conventional corn Then I wouldn't have to use one of the little hand pump five gallon at a time deal This is a bigger container. It's easy to carry and it has a mechanized so you just turn it on in the sprays The earth way cedar down in the bottom right corner is how I planted the corn So it's not like a popper type thing in it and the different wheels for corn and that's I use that because that's what I like what our area use that's what we were using on our part of the time So something was going to work and needed to work with what we were already using This fertilizer in the bucket on the bottom left is the first the conventional fertilizer the triple 20 Nitrogen synthetic fertilizer And we just get that from the local ag supply store for the organic fertilizer We did use chicken manure that wasn't locally sourced, but it was organic So for planting you can see here on the bottom left This is my dad and I planting he was working out a kink with one of the belts And I was going back through and making sure the top covered up We found that when it's done with this planter that sometimes the seeds are always covered up And then if you don't go back and just like take a little dirt over them Then the birds come through and pick the seeds out even before they have a chance to sprout And then bottom right is when I was staking because we have a problem with crows Eating our little sprouts. So when the corn first comes out, but it's just doesn't even have roots in the ground very much It's just sprouting off the seeds still crows will come through and pull the corn right out of the ground But if you take like old popcans out of your cycle invent Tie them to like what's tomato twine to a wooden stake and stake them in the ground The noise rattling around generally keeps a lot away Fertilizing this is an example of a process of fertilizing First we started to use the fertilizer with like a grass seed spreader Thinking that it would broadcast over it But then I felt like after doing that for one row that it wasn't really getting on the row And it wasn't the most effective way to use the fertilizer So then we just took it in the hand and just like toss it down the row like you would synthetic fertilizer Budget components. I had some outside labor and I traveled to the over conference last year was an exhibitor in the exhibit hall and has some posters and So I needed some supplies for that to create my posters print the pictures out and to get the registration for the conference A really nice thing about the sear grants is that they really want you to include everything that you can in your budget So the farmer themselves is not in a pocket or anything So they include you they encourage you to include things like your gas up here and just making sure that it's the appropriate rate For when you get reimbursement for things. I Also had money for supplies such as seeds and fertilizers gas I had electric fencing materials because we have a deer problem and a raccoon problem getting into our corn We use the solar powered electric box and then strung two rows of Metal wire around one about hip height so that the deer would be blocked and one about angle height So the raccoons will be blocked I've also seen people do three rows of it, but I didn't particularly feel this was necessary So now I'm going to go through the different varieties of the corn that I chose and some pictures of the seed the plants and Your corn at the end. So this is stoles evergreen. It's an heirloom white variety and this was grown conventionally As you can see, that's me in the corn patch and that's a pretty tall variety of sweet corn In terms of yellow bodacious, which is a hybrid variety that's commonly grown It's usually about as tall as I am So that was particularly tall It was fairly easy to plant the kernels went nicely through the earth way sear And then I always have the planting dates here Golden bantam is the heirloom yellow corn So it was very hard to plant because of the way the seeds were shaped They would constantly get stuck in the planter and then you have to like pop them out and replant it and the population wasn't as good because Not as many came out when you were walking with the planter Blue jade is the um Basically, I had I had three hybrid varieties a white a yellow and a bicolor and so instead of a bicolor heirloom, which I don't really think As far as I can tell from my research there aren't bicolor heirlooms. So I chose a colored variety of heirloom coordinates blue jade Um, it was very easy to plant the kernels were very tiny and as you can see again the plant height I mean it was up to like mid five on me. So the plant height was very small um, we had some damage to it before the raccoon fencing was put up just because um Um It was so low to the ground that the raccoons could just run through and rip it off So we had some damage to that and that's the color of the corn up there. So it's a very beautiful color What do you mean by that like sweet corn too? Yeah, we ate it. Um, I mean we just like Boiled it for five minutes and put some butter and salt on it and ate it. Um, it's not quite as tender As some other varieties of corn. It's I think personally it would better if you were grinding a cornmeal Um, but it is still still still tasty This is the silver queen and it's um, it's our white hybrid variety And we planted it a little bit later and then we also had to replant it and that was by hand So we just I just went through and like replanted it because I saw when it was little enough That it wasn't going to be enough. So I just went through I also had to trouble with earthquake cedar in this one, which is kind of interesting because I had never had problems planting silver queens that planted before This is the bodacious which I was talking to you about earlier. It's our yellow hybrid. Um, and so The with the convention or with the hybrid varieties I had a lot of difficulties finding organic seed like organic certified seed and so because of that That's why I have on this one. Um, the organic planted So if it has them on the same slide, that probably means that I didn't wasn't able to find seed Puget and cream was the Bicolored variety that I chose and it's a beautiful variety and a lot of customers really like that variety We like it. It's easy to grow Um, we did have some problems with the population and I replanted it later on The silver queen, um, this is a really good example of what the issue is When I was doing proposing for this grant. This is the fungal disease smudge. It's an airborne disease those spores Infect the they can affect many parts of the corn most commonly affect the kernel of the corn so each of these Things here is a kernel of corn And now it's been infected and it's blown up and it's but it's moldy and it's To us in general it's inedible. Um, however, I have found that it is a delicacy in a lot of Mexican restaurants and If you were ever able to propagate it and grow it on purpose you would probably make a fortune Because it's very very expensive. It's sold at the pound and it weighs hardly nothing So, um, and that's an example of how much foliage is on a silver queen plate. That's why that picture is there No, it kind of grosses me out And it's something I try to prevent so I don't know. I've never had it but Yeah How many how large Do we hear plots as far as anchorage? Um, each so each section each variety And each treatment organic and conventional got four rows each 150 feet long I did four rows because a lot of times the outer two rows have different Effects for different populations of different yields than inner rows So that way I had inner and outer instead of just multiple rows To plant the silver silver queen organic? But all the varieties were planted organically and conventionally This is the golden bantam organic It had to be replanted This one was interesting because remember the conventional golden bantam was hard to plant with the earth plant planter This one wasn't as hard to plant but Still difficult Souls evergreen organic This was personally one of my favorites and seemed to grow very nicely and it did well and Um with the with the chicken manure fertilizer, it just really seemed to this combination seemed to work really well There's a solar drink that you have as much sugar content in that as you did in the others I did not evaluate sugar content. I found that that solar does not have as a good sugar Sugar taste as some of the other varieties and it has shorter shelf life 20 you know when you go to the farmers market itself. Yeah Um Was this the way I marketed my products is through a community supported agriculture. So Because we have so many customers We have about 175 customers and I don't want them all coming in on one day and picking up So we pick the day of so We have a cold room like a walk-in cooler where we can store things and things get ready before They need to be picked but in general if I'm picking corn I'm picking it The morning of they come pick it up that afternoon um part of the analysis I did Was I had a grower satisfaction from our end and I had a consumer satisfaction And I'll talk about that a little bit later, but it's basically like a blind Um survey where I gave some of my customers and said we Try this out Tell me how you liked it and I didn't tell them whether it was heirloom or hybrid or Organic or conventional, but I've marked down which ones they were trying and that was kind of interesting So results like I said, I'm a measured grower and consumer satisfaction I measured yield population planting Ear length and plant height So in general the hybrids were more uniform and stalk size and ear length And they were more uniform and and maturation So for instance with the golden bantam, um, it was hard to tell When it was ready because the cob itself was so small around That comparatively to any other variety I have ever grown that when I felt it it felt like it wasn't ready But then when I picked one It looked ready and I tasted it and it tasted ready So it was easy to get that to a point where it was almost too Ready and then it became a little bit tough um With the silver queen that was the exception because it did not mature Appropriately and I had to go through and pick that patch several times Which is not ideal for farmers because farmers would just like to pick the patch clean Maybe pick it a second time and be gone with it Um, that's how most of the hybrid varieties were most of the heirloom varieties. You kind of had to like spot pick Um comparing the organic and the conventional Honestly, the labor time wasn't that different. I expected it to be tremendously higher on the organic side because there was going to have to be weeding time and Um, but it it just wasn't that different the hours long and the conventional Plots and the hours long when the organic plots were higher in the organic plots but not Detrimental, so I don't think it's a hindrance to do it organically based on labor time alone Um, the conventional was less expensive in the seed It was easier to find in bulk a lot of times like with the blue jade seed I had to buy it smaller packages and when things are bought in smaller packages they cost more money So that was kind of a hindrance Oh, this was the herbicide that I sprayed the conventional with the bolly atz And I chose that because after consulting with the ag guy who we usually consult with at the supply store Because it has the atz which is the atrazine in it and it's got um A broadleaf as well. So it both this particular product kills broadleafs and grasses So that's why I chose that one So now I'm going to go through a couple of graphs um along the bottom it has The varieties that I've grown same means conventional and means organic I'll just pinpoint a few of the results The bodacious yellow, which is the yellow hybrid variety grown conventionally was personally My favorite to grow easiest to pick out the stalk matured most uniformly Um, I didn't have any problems with weed pressure disease pressure insect pressure hardly any earworms I just felt like it was really easy corn to grow didn't take that much maintenance Um, also the stoles evergreen conventionally was also one of my favorites to grow Didn't I mean that one had probably the least amount of earworms The reason it wasn't the highest on my list was because it doesn't Mature uniformly and so I had to spot pick it and I wasn't I didn't always have enough ready for everyone that day So I had to mix varieties and let people sort of pick and choose which is okay It's just not the way I usually try to run the csa The lowest one was a silver queen organic. There was so much smut issues with it, um They didn't see it didn't seem to respond as well to the chicken manure compared to the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer It just was not Not my favorite to grow Did you repeat it to top ones again? Yeah, the top ones are bodacious conventional and stoles evergreen conventional And this is the consumer satisfaction Again the top two the top one was the peaches and cream organic And the second was the bodacious conventional um What was interesting was that the conventional and the organic taste wise when people or the tenderness and all these things that they were Evaluating it didn't seem to be that much Different they didn't seem to have a preference one way or the other Especially because they weren't They didn't know like it's an organic as a conventional Not to say they didn't have preferences personally with their morals or their health beliefs about conventional versus organic But in terms of taste which is what some people say is their reasoning for buying organic They couldn't taste the difference And this is a listing just from like top to bottom So at the top is the highest ranked At the bottom is the lowest ranked Blue jade was the lowest on the consumers. They just said it was kind of mealy It was a little more tough the ear length isn't near as long as you'll see on one of the Future graphs I mean they're only like Four inches five inches long and the ear length instead of you know an eight or ten inch ear Which is what people like to have because if they're just going to buy a dozen You know a dozen as a dozen regardless of how long or how thick the kernels are Um and the growers the silver queens were my least favorite to grow just because of how many I had to throw out because of smut I mean smut like I said can be profitable in a situation, but for the vegetable csa They don't want it. I can't use it Followed by the golden bantam because it was hard to plant it matured Oddly it was hard to tell when it was ready How did you ask the consumers To evaluate what did you give them a tool? What would you I gave them a form an evaluation form explaining what my project was and I sort of You know randomly and thought about which customers to ask because I knew which ones would be like no I don't want to do this and I knew which ones would be okay with doing an answer honestly um, and so then I would just give them two varieties per week and so at the Who we have is like a regular share and a robust share and the robust share gets a dozen ears of corn per week when in season And the regular share gets six years So then I would just say I'm going to split your share of corn among two varieties and then I would tell them This is variety a this is variety would be if they looked too similar I would put them in like separate containers marked like ab And then in my book I would mark down which varieties I was giving out that day And I had them evaluate qualities like tenderness taste how easy was it to cook that you're going to like it Things like those These are the yields Um, so the varieties are on the bottom and the blue is conventional. The red is organic So you can see it's not always one or the other Um, what was interesting though was the heirloom varieties are These three are the heirloom varieties and you can see grown in the conventional manner Always had significantly higher yields Which I kind of thought would be the reverse just because heirloom was grown Traditionally organic not conventional um And and two of the hybrid varieties the organic Was more productive and again, I thought that was sort of reverse Because the hybrid varieties were Made to be grown conventionally, but that's not always the best way for the yields Especially the peaches and cream This is a table showing you air length So, um, the starts these top three are the hybrids these bottom three are the heirloom varieties Obviously the stoles evergreen And the peaches and cream bodacious Well, all of these are pretty much long and then the golden band two were short. You can see the blue j Um was very short comparatively stoles evergreen was obviously the highest. I mean 13 and a half inches Grown conventionally is I mean that's a long ear of corn. That's over a foot long And those are averages taken from a sampling of different years This is population per planting. So you can see, um, it wasn't always One way or the other But again, I mean, this is such a dramatic difference the heirloom The population the conventional plantings was so much higher than the population and the organic plantings I mean just so much higher and I Not exactly sure why that is but I was very surprised by that result to say the least Yeah, so the number of plants so I just went through like one two three and at the end of each row I marked my book how many and then I counted three to the four rows. So I just went through and counted them all This is plant height Um And now when I just went out there at the tape measure and I just my brother is six four. So I had him Ordered at the top and I measured it down at the bottom like that. What does this say? And then you tell me what it says and I record it in my notebook Um, and again, these are averages set multiple plants. So I went through and then just pick like tallest and the shortest But you can see it's Soles evergreen was obviously the tallest but you can see it on the picture as well when I'm standing there It was just it just towered over me Why did you include plant height as one of your parameters? Um, I thought that it might show a difference in conventional versus organic because I thought maybe one of the fertilizers the other would allow the plant growth to be taller I don't know necessarily a good thing because if you're still only getting in production two years of corn Per planting then I'm not sure maybe it's a waste of energy to grow that tall of a plant When you're only getting two years of corn because of the blue jade I mean you would get a 36 inch Plant that's three feet tall, but on that plant I got like six years of corn and so That's probably just thinking about it logically a more energy efficient plant Then say 117 inches or still is evergreen, but only only get two years for plant um I don't know that that's really important for producers because we're not trying to maximize energy use in terms of fertilizer, but If anyone was ever looking at like the biomechanics or biofuel sort of things That would be interesting This is part of my outreach Project. This is me last year at the OFA conference. I was an exhibitor at the booth um I also had a local newspaper article about the project And I talked to a local farmer to see what his thoughts were about the results and to help me with part of the discussion for the Report to talk about why things might have been different or what could have been and he's a local farmer He's been doing it for his whole life, and he's probably about 75 years old. So he's still in production So he must know a thing or two Um, I was also a keynote speaker at the Warren county soil and water conservation districts annual conference They had myself and a chief meteorologist in our area come and speak at their conference. So That was a really good outreach opportunity And then I was at a field day where people came to my farm and Saw the plots and asked questions about what was going on and why did I think do things differently? That sort of thing Um, this is the benefits and impacts and this Um square here shows what people were evaluating and the consumer evaluation um part of the benefits, um improved stream quality because we have a Um water conservation plan with NRCS for the waterways and the no till type feel and um where our conventional plots are are right next to and a little bit above on terms of height For we're spraying the atrazine. So when it rains too much, I'm sure that those soils are just going right into the water stream um So if that on the organic plot, it was certainly improved compared to the conventional because the previous year is if I hadn't been doing this trial all of it would have been conventional and Um, so it would have been twice as much runoff Um manure use increased herbicide decreased Um marketing the farm produce increased people were really interested in the fact that I had heirloom varieties They like having different varieties They really enjoy the experience of learning their other varieties out there than just You know what they see in kroger what they see in even whole foods Um things they just can't get and that goes beyond just sweet corn with eggplants or peppers or tomatoes And people really enjoyed the multiple varieties. In fact with the egg plant on our farm I found that the black beauty which is the typical eggplant is people's least favorite So what did we learn? Consumers can't taste the difference in sweet corn between organic and conventional Again, like I said, they may have reasons that they choose organic health reasons or environmental reasons But in terms of taste they cannot taste the difference This is a picture of the field day down here When we're showcasing the sweet corn What to do differently so if I could do it again, I would consider personal labor costs Uh, I considered in the budget outside labor costs because obviously I had to pay someone else to help me with this I did not consider my own personal time as a cost And I think that's something if you're all going to apply for a grant that you should definitely consider I mean, I enjoyed it anyway, but I mean realistically if I hadn't been doing the work I would have had to pay someone else to do it and that would have been a cost Um, I'd also have more specifically designated tasks. So it was easy for me to say This needs done whoever's available can do it, but it would be nice to say You know counting the population is my job and fertilizing is So it's their job and when it needs done that I could just be Aware that that person needs to spend time during their day to do that Um, I would also do more insect scouting. I didn't really do that in a scientific manner I did it more of an observational way where I could just say That variety didn't have any and that one had a lot but a lot I mean, it's subjective. So Um, I think that's one thing that it was part of a weakness in my grant And then I would also talk to more farmers in the area to show my results and to share them Yeah Oh gosh, um It had It probably was close to 200 Including like the researching the planting the fertilizing the harvesting without reach with preparation writing the grant Final report all those things probably close to 200 The serigran will pay you for your labor. Yeah That's one thing farmers that we work with on the grants They say, okay, I'll put in here a dollar an hour or it's like no We should be put in Donald's weight in there, right? I mean try to find it keep in mind even if it's time intensive It will pay you for your labor, which is a little different At some point. Yeah, and it's different and again like with the gas mileage I mean there's a set rate that you have for gas mileage and there's a good and make it comparable to what the pay is in your area So if for some reason it's way higher in your area than the state or national Average, you know, maybe put in your budget explanation like this is higher because And just list your reason So where do we go from here? This bottom right picture is just an aerial view from the top of our house of the vegetable csa plots But we have decided to keep stills evergreen to replace silver queen Customers like it better. It grows better. There's less disease on it It matures more uniformly And then we've also switched to using the chicken manure at least on their sweet corn production and occasionally on other vegetables when we have left over Just because it responds the plants respond really well and If you can get it from the right source, it can be less expensive better for the environment It's just a nice sort of circle of life concept And then I also have decided to let the customer be a variety or part of a variety experimentation Again with the eggplant with the tomatoes they can say I really like this one Or I didn't like this one at all. It's easy to tell at the end of the day Which varieties of tomatoes are left over and if they're consistently left over people don't like that variety and you change it And these are some of my acknowledgements. I moved to the Ohio Farm Bureau The conservation district my family all helped OPA helped with allowing me to be here as a presenter Um Clarksville ag I had sarah staff and regional coordinators and my professor at the University of Kentucky She was a big help in helping me write the proposal So If you all have any questions now, I will take those Um, no, I don't have a really good record of that Basically within the family farm system we each have our own Set up where we have traditional roles and responsibilities And my dad is responsible for Because he's done this his whole life. I mean, he's just decided like this is and he knows this is how much Fertilize of the core needs so I just use what we always used Just to one make it a more of a control standard So I wasn't changing so many different things in production And two because it always seems to work before so I just thought I would try Is it is it based on So many pounds per row or I mean is this something you can actively it out Yeah, I'm sure that it is something like pounds per row Um, we have got it down sort of to An art where I fill a bucket up Like if I've got a bucket and then I hold the bucket and reach my hand it and I get a handful And I walk about Like five feet And but so I Think that gets so yeah, yeah I mean, I can do like eight rows 200 feet Long each um with like two and a half gallons Because I have a five gallon bucket and I can't carry it I just wonder how would you compare your organic to your conventional? I mean the organic was a five four two or whatever the conventional was a 12 Is a triple 20 Yeah, and I think that was interesting to see in the production results and the yield results and the plant height results because Again, I kind of expected with a triple 20 nitrogen That you would have significantly higher because you're putting on so much more because I did the same thing I still just got a handful and walked like five feet with the chicken manure and it was only five four three and um Sometimes the plants grew taller had better yields with the chicken manure. So it makes me think that the triple 20 might be a waste Of energy a waste of nitrogen that you don't really need that much nitrogen on there um And like I said, we've sort of switched to using chicken manure just because plants respond just as well if not better They certainly are a much darker green color which indicates in general plant health And you only fertilize them at one time At the beginning when they were about Varying from like this tall to this tall is when I would fertilize them I didn't want to fertilize them They were too much taller than that because they would get too much foliage The fertilizer would stick down in there and it would burn it up, right? Well, if you all have any more questions Actually, um, I am curious. I'm a foreign language person So like working with the Hispanic community would be really neat for this month But I'm curious if you did did you have crossover between The the silver queen smut and your other varieties? Did they drop in? that um You know, there was a little bit of crossover with the fungal smut Especially the golden bantam seemed to have a little bit of problem with it, which is the yellow air room variety um, but I saw no smut in the bodacious blue jade The stole is evergreen Maybe a couple of it kernels got infected with the peaches and cream, but not enough that I would be concerned about Yeah, mostly just silver queen. So if you ever try to propagate it silver queen would be best Yeah Some of them we split By about a week just for many reasons But the main reason was because we were doing this project in conjunction with the vegetable csa Um, if I planted all of these at the same time I would have had a lot of corn ready all at one time Although some of the maturation dates were longer So the stole's evergreen had a longer maturation date as well as the silver queen So then I was able to plant them at the same time. It's like bodacious, which is a very short Maturation time and I would still get them ready at different times When I replanted them Uh, they were those were obviously planted at different times because I waited to see if they were going to do something It's a patch of corn and when they did it that I ripped it out and replanted it So they were around the time of like Mid to late may through mid to late june was when things were being planted The late the mid june is when they were being replanted And those varieties were not ready until about labor day Which is something to consider when you're thinking about um corn earworms or armyworms because the later in the season you get the more earworms you have But we um don't seem to have That was one of the reasons um one of the suggestions that the regional seric coordinator Alan Sundermeyer gave to me was to not apply any Insecticides of any kind on the conventional plot because he thought that that would mess up the insect population on the conventional side of it However On our farm. We really don't have a problem with insects I was just going to spray the insecticide on the conventional corn for the fact that a lot of people in our area do We've never sprayed it on our corn But I recently did some cultural research on that and found that when you have giant ragweed Also on your property that it cuts down. It that's another host for Army worms and corn earworms. So when you have ragweed then it's You know it takes away from the corn earworms on the corn If it's in the right area, I guess if you don't have allergies to it And use the chicken manure again for the yield Was there an overall number of the yield or was it just five? Um the way I determine yield by different varieties. So in general all of the varieties had better yields with the Chicken manure use but they were a few that did better with the triple 20 Um again, I think that would be interesting if I had done something with like scientific analysis or like, you know, crushed up the plants and gone into a lab and worked with What's the biochemical properties now at this plant between? um The chicken manure use or the triple 20 use I did do soil tests at the beginning and the end of each plot and um the The organic plots definitely had better soil organic matter and then at the end of it Some of your dad using chicken manure now or they're just huge My dad's not actually a full-time farmer. He is a microsoft engineer and he's self-employed But he has had a garden his whole life and he helped his parents So he helps us within the family farm so Sort of since he's at work all day and now I have this degree and I've expanded my part in it a lot I sort of make a managerial decision and then consult him on it because he has so much knowledge And then make sure no one else in the family has an objection And then say this is what we're gonna do