I tilled up a little area out by the front fence where I had some summer veggies growing (that mostly burnt up) today.
Those are tomatos on the right side of the picture, they are setting fruit for the second time this year. Anyway, on to the question. I wanted to plant some sweet corn here. I had trouble finding any seed this time of year but after a trip to the old garden center / feed store he had seed. I think it's bi-color as I recall, maybe peaches and cream. Anyway when I opened the paper sack (he sells it by the ounce) I discovered the seed had a red coating of some kind on it. I've never seen this before although I'm guessing it's common. So what is it, and what's it's purpose? My guess is to keep it dry, or maybe some sort of fertilizer? It comes off on your hands sort of in a powder form, but not much of it when handling the seed. Here is a picture of the seed.
One last thing. I'm wondering what is the best way to store seed. No cool dry area here, we are near the coast and it's hot and humid on a regular basis. I planted some leftover corn from this spring and I got less than 10% that came up. It was stored in the house, but the AC was off all summer. Should I keep it in the refrigerator? Curious because I didn't plant it all and would like to set out more about February.
Note: We have not had a freeze in several years now, that last freeze we had lasted about 6 hours. Our coldest weather is usually the first week of January so the corn I planted today should be ready a couple of weeks prior to that.
Those are tomatos on the right side of the picture, they are setting fruit for the second time this year. Anyway, on to the question. I wanted to plant some sweet corn here. I had trouble finding any seed this time of year but after a trip to the old garden center / feed store he had seed. I think it's bi-color as I recall, maybe peaches and cream. Anyway when I opened the paper sack (he sells it by the ounce) I discovered the seed had a red coating of some kind on it. I've never seen this before although I'm guessing it's common. So what is it, and what's it's purpose? My guess is to keep it dry, or maybe some sort of fertilizer? It comes off on your hands sort of in a powder form, but not much of it when handling the seed. Here is a picture of the seed.
One last thing. I'm wondering what is the best way to store seed. No cool dry area here, we are near the coast and it's hot and humid on a regular basis. I planted some leftover corn from this spring and I got less than 10% that came up. It was stored in the house, but the AC was off all summer. Should I keep it in the refrigerator? Curious because I didn't plant it all and would like to set out more about February.
Note: We have not had a freeze in several years now, that last freeze we had lasted about 6 hours. Our coldest weather is usually the first week of January so the corn I planted today should be ready a couple of weeks prior to that.