Local sweet corn arrives before the fireworks
Photo by Markell DeLoatch — PublIc Opinion
Brent Barnhart eats sweet corn fresh off the stalk Monday at Country Creek Produce Farm, Chambersburg. Local sweet corn and tomatoes are ready earlier than usual this year.
(Franklin County) — Farmers are pushing the envelope of summer cuisine.
Sweet corn slathered in butter and fresh tomatoes, sliced and speckled with pepper and salt, are likely to be on picnic plates a week early this year.
Farmers have rolled back the first day for local tomatoes and are working on sweet corn. The weather has been cooperating.
The rule of thumb: The first local sweet corn is available for Independence Day.
Commercial grower Joe Brubaker said he could have corn as early as the weekend before the Fourth.
“The plants were started in a greenhouse,” he said. “The rain and hot weather helped it get ready.”
For a week he’s also been picking Scarlet Red tomatoes on his Washington Township farm. The tomatoes were started in plastic-covered hoop houses, known as high tunnels.
The high tunnels and faster maturing varieties have pushed the corn-and-tomato season into June.
Brent Barnhart of Country Creek Produce Farm picked a couple of ears of sweet corn on Friday, nine days earlier than in the two previous seasons. His first sweet corn should be available Wednesday at his farm stand on Etter Road, Chambersburg.
“I planted the corn as late as last year on April 14 or 15,” Barnhart said. “This year it stayed colder longer. I was worried it was going to be too late. With this heat and humidity it’s been crazy. It seems like we’ve already had more hot days than all of last year.”
Pennsylvania growers sold fresh sweet corn worth $28.7 million in 2014 and fresh tomatoes worth $27.1 million, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. the state ranks among the top 10 producers in the U.S.
Local corn thrived in the hot, dry May — with a little help.
“Anybody who grows vegetables is irrigating, or ready to irrigate,” said Steve Bogash, Penn State Extension horticulture educator. “Nobody wants to take the chance of blowing their investment. Corn will put down deep roots early. If it can get going, it can work its way around it.”
Recent nights have been warm and humid.
It makes sense that producers growing faster maturing varieties and covering young plants will get corn sooner, according to Bogash. Early varieties of sweet corn usually have smaller ears.
The earliest produce also comes at a premium. Barnhart said he adds an extra quarter per dozen, but it hardly makes up for transplanting corn plants and heating hoop houses.
“I have thousands of dollars in labor,” he said. “I don’t make money on early corn. I just want to get out the gate early.”
“You pay a premium for any decent produce,” Bogash said. The high quality of produce grown in a high tunnel cannot be compared to that of field-grown vegetables, he said.
Bogash begins picking tomatoes on Tuesday from the high tunnels at Penn State’s Landisville research farm in Lancaster County. Two of the three high tunnels are heated with propane in mid-March to give plants a jump start.
Sarah Bay, manager of Fulton Farms at Wilson College, said the farm’s tomatoes are flourishing in the rain and hot weather and should be ready by-mid July, “a tad early.”
“We harvested summer squash and cucumbers earlier than ever, about a week or two earlier,” Bay said. “We have a lot of weeds we are dealing with. They are growing as fast as the crops. They’ve been more of a headache this year.”
Jim Hook can be reached at 717-262-4759.
This article comes to us through a partnership between Public Opinion Online and WITF.
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