EATING FRESH ALL YEAR ROUND

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Sweet corn can be frozen on or off the cob and canned. It can also be dried. Of course, some corn is supposed to be dried. Popcorn needs to be dried but not too much because it is the moisture in the kernels that makes them pop when it expands. We let popcorn dry on the stalk as long as possible, which usually means until the birds get hungry. Then we pull the husks back, tie them in bundles, and hang them in a dry place for a few weeks. Then the kernels are shelled off the cob and stored in an airtight jar so the drying is stopped.

Field or flint corn can't get too dry. We treat it the same as popcorn except for the shelling which takes place later. If it is not dry enough, it will gum up the grinder when you come to grind. We leave it hanging from the rafters until we are ready to use it or until we decide it is getting dusty.

You need a big garden to grow all these varieties of corn as they all need to be separated during pollination. The separation can be either space or time. The Handbook for Vegetable Growers by James Edward Knott (John Wiley & Sons, New York) says that different varieties of corn should be planted a mile apart. As long as you are growing for your own table and not to sell seed you can gamble on opposite corners of the garden. If there is some cross pollination it will most likely result in partially filled ears or skipped rows of kernels.

A Storer's Hall of Fame:

ONIONS

The opposite end of the storability scale from lettuce has got to be onions. The rules for onions are: don't let them freeze, don't store them wet or in a wet place, and don't store rotten ones. Accomplishing this is just too easy. First, when

onions are ready to be harvested, they lie down so there is no trick to knowing when to harvest (By the way, you can harvest an onion any time you feel like it during the season). You can harvest the onions for storage any time after they lie down and before a hard frost. They won't rot, get eaten by anything, or lose flavor or quality in anyway. When I get around to it I pull all the onions and drop them right there in the row. They can lie on top of the ground like this for a casual period of time unless frost threatens. They can also be rained upon, which will clean them up a bit, as well as stand full sun. The idea is to let them dry and cure a bit. The soil that may have come up with their roots will fall off.

Not all of the onions will lie down at the same time, so you may have some with practically dry tops and others that still have green tops. If you can't leave them in the garden until all the tops are dry, you can move them to a porch or some other dry place where they can be spread out to finish the drying process.

The final step is to pick each one up by hand and feel it while putting it in an onion bag or a basket or whatever. My "feeling it" is really just giving it a squeeze designed to pull off dirt and perhaps the outer skin. It is all accomplished in the time it takes to pick up an onion and transfer it to the bag or basket. I'm not trying to make them picture-book clean. Mostly I want to be sure there are no soft ones. A soft onion is a rotten onion and you don't want any of them in storage.

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