Long-anticipated season
The joy of every farmer is to see and harvest a gainful proceed after sacrificing a lot of time cultivating his farmland.
This season got me this far, it could be only God that made this season what it is. Having to see the fast growth of my corn which I planted a few months ago.
Here in my area, there is what we usually called this season, when corn is out like this, we say it is "CUT FOR ME SEASON", which is asking a person holding or eating roasted corn to cut for you, that why we say cut for me the season has arrived.
This corn can be eaten in my area with local pear, the two could be roasted that is the corn and peer, or the peer can be eating been boiled depending on your choice. Another supplement can be coconut, a well-broken coconut with an ear of roasted corn can go a long way to quench your taste while keeping you busy and alive especially when on a journey or long discussion and gist, I must say.
I just love this season because of the many delicacies that come along with corn maize, making food that comes from maize much more cheaper and affordable such as the local pap.
The corn is easy to plant and quick to grow, when once it is above the weed level, it is done fully and you keep monitoring it till harvest time as I am doing now, expecting my very first harvest next week by God's grace.
The only obstacles or set back I encountered were the side of parasites such as birth eating the flower of the corn when it was sprouting new, this made a good number of my corn die off while some survive like this one below
When I was about planting, I decided not to use any kind of chemical fertilizer to see what the outcome will be like and to be able to compare it to that of last year but I use some amount of animal waste like goat and pig waste.
Now I can say, that animal waste is quite preferable to chemical substances being used.
By next week, my pocket will rise again because a lot of sales will be done and some of the corn will be taken to the market while some will be consumed immediately at home in a different way like roasting, boiling and some will be taken to the mill for processing into what is known in the Ibibio language as Ogih and popularly known as pap and will be used alongside bread or akara.
I believe I have learned a lot this season before, in the cost of planting and after harvest of which I will use the lesson learned on next year's @CUT FOR ME SEASON.
I hope you would miss out on this nutritional delicacy, you can get one at most 100 naira not much or expensive at all.
Do well to secure a little farmland next year if you don't mind and if you have already, get set for the next planting season, so you can be a beneficiary of corn in just four months at least.
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Looks good. Glad you have a good harvest. You mentioned "secure some farmland and enjoy corn" .. what that a call to others to get land and farm it? If so how expensive is it to secure farmland? Just curious
Mmmmmm....its a plan and also a set up plan..anyone can achieve that, if you you plan and focus
Well I never checked the measurement but I have gotten land apace for lease from something around $10 to harvest a bag or two of corn...
Smaller land space can go for lesser amount.
Something I really want to do someday...If I can find someone willing to take on the task.... is to grow either a Moringa or Cassava plant (preferably Moringa). The would be to see how much I could harvest from the plant each year IN LEAVES. I know it seems silly but the Moringa tree adds natural fertilizer to all the plants around it every year it grows AND the leaves are highly nutritious (miracle food). I'm curious how much one single tree could provide every year. Cassava is second choice because it also has nutritious leaves but it does not enrich the soil around it.
Yes, I know Cassava is normally grown for the root. However, think how much easier it would be if you only planted once then harvested the leaves for many years to come. That's got to be easier than harvesting the roots annually.
Anyways, that's a someday dream. If I could get a piece of land big enough for a tree for $10 every few months and a person to look after the tree I think that would be a cool fun project :)
(Side note: a mature moringa tree can provide up to 1000kg of leaves per year. That would be 350,000 calories or enough to feed a person for half a year. About the same number of calories as 250kg of rice...not bad from one tree)
Your corn is doing so well but I fear that the maize cobs looks smaller, or are they just coming up.