Corn

We used to raise more corn than any other vegetable in our garden, and during sweetcorn season dinner would consist of all you can eat corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, and a cup of milk. Any left over corn would be enjoyed cold the next day with butter and salt.

My least favorite thing about getting corn ready to eat was when I found a worm already snacking on the kernels at the top. It never failed to make me shiver. There were ways to combat this problem. One was the very time consuming method of carefully putting about a teaspoon full of mineral oil on each ear of corn when the silk was developing which deterred moths from laying their eggs there.

My preferred method was having plenty of bluebird and purple martin birdhouses all around the sweetcorn patch and allow the birds to do all the work and keep the moths away. The years we had an abundance of birds the worms found in the corn was almost zero.