Corn detasseling gives a kernel of hope to next year’s crop
Photo
Wearing a raincoat to keep dry from the still damp corn stalks, a teenage girl reaches for a corn tassle on a "female" plant. The tassles on the plants are pulled so that the taller "male" plants will fertilize the females creating a hybrid seed.
Photo
A "female" corn plant that has had its tassle chopped off, shows off the beginnings of the silk from an immature ear of corn. The taller, "male" plant nearby will produce pollen which will fetilize the female through the silk.
Photo
An immature ear of seed corn with its silk attached to each kernal. The "male" plant deposits pollen on the emerging silks and fertilizes the earns on the "female" plant.
MORE INFORMATION
Hartung Brothers contracts with farmers to grow vegetables and seeds in Wisconsin and throughout the United States. The business also includes a trucking service. The business was founded near Janesville, and the headquarters moved to Madison in 2000.
To learn more, visit www.hartungbrothers.com.
LA PRAIRIE TOWNSHIP — Corn detassling.
The words are enough to make many southern Wisconsin adults shudder, remembering their first jobs. Detasseling is a first job for many local teens.
If you’ve never stood in a cornfield in July, you might not realize how the sun beats down, and how humid it is among thousands of growing corn plants.
Step in among the green leaves for just a minute, and you walk out with wet clothes.
While it’s sticky, hot labor for a few, it’s the first step in creating the seeds that will be planted to grow next year’s crop.
The detassling season lasts only a few weeks in mid-summer. It started and will end early this year because of the warm weather, said Hartung Brothers field representative John McCarthy.
Hartung Brothers is a seed corn grower. Instead of selling corn as feed for cattle or food for people, the kernels are saved and sold to farmers for next year’s crop.
On a recent morning, Hartung workers were cutting into the last field of the season in La Prairie Township south of Janesville. In the fall, the kernels will be harvested, dried and bagged for next year’s crop.
Picking seeds
Hartung Brothers is one of several companies that grow seed corn in Rock County. The plants have been specially selected to contain traits that lead to high yields.
Farmers have many brands and types of seeds to choose from.
What they choose depends on the weather, the location and personal preference, said Hartung field representative Jeff Bublitz.
Farmers in northern Wisconsin or Canada might want corn that matures quickly—in 70 days or so—for the short growing season. Farmers in southern Illinois could grow 100-day corn.
Some plants are grown to stand up longer in the field in the fall and into winter for late harvesting. Some corn grows better on dry, sandy soil, while some makes better silage. Silage is cattle feed made by chopping the entire corn plant, preserving it and storing it in a silo.
Some corn hybrids have been genetically modified for protection from pests or diseases.
One example is Bt-corn, which has been modified to create a protein found naturally in a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. When the borer feeds on the corn plant, it consumes the protein and dies.
Planting
To make a hybrid seed, producers must cross the genetic material from two types of corn plants, McCarthy said.
To make the cross, seed companies plant two varieties of corn in a pattern: one row of “Type A” corn and four rows of “Type B” corn.
In late June and July, tiny ears start to form on the stalks. Inside, hundreds of “silks” are forming. The “silks” are the strings you might peel off a cob of sweet corn.
As the tiny ear grows, the silks grow inside it. The silks are the female reproductive part of the plant.
Bublitz picked a thin ear and peeled it open to demonstrate. It contained nothing but a wad of silks.
He uses the width of his thumb to measure how far the silks have to grow before they emerge from the ear.
Three or four days before the silks emerge, it’s time to cut the tassels off the corn.
Cutting
On the top of the plant, the spiky tassel creates pollen. The tassel is the male reproductive part of the plant.
The pollen ripens into yellow grit; it drifts on the breeze and is caught by the sticky silks.
The pollen protein travels down the silk, and a kernel develops at the end, McCarthy said. Each silk makes one kernel, he said.
This happens in every cornfield in the world, whether farmers are growing sweet corn for the grocery store or field corn for cattle.
However, seed corn producers such as Hartung Brothers need to mix the genetic material from two types of plants to get hybrid seed.
They can’t allow a plant to pollinate itself.
That’s where detassling comes in.
Right before the silks emerge from tiny, growing ears, a cutter rolls through the field and mows 6 inches off the top of the four rows of “Type B” corn.
That removes about half of the tassel. The other half is growing inside the stalk.
Overnight, the tassel will grow an inch or so out of the stalk. Then a roller is driven through the field. Each plant is squeezed between two small, rubber wheels. The maturing tassel pops out and is discarded.
The roller removes about 80 percent of the tassels.
A day or two later, workers walk through the field and remove the rest by hand.
Without a tassel, the plants are referred to as “female” corn.
The single rows of “male” corn are knocked down after they’ve done their job of pollinating the “female” corn. The kernels are of no use to seed producers because the plant might have pollinated itself.
Pollenating
A generation or two ago, farmers didn’t buy hybrid seed from commercial seed producers.
They saved the best ears of corn from their crops, dried the kernels carefully and saved them for planting, McCarthy said.
Technically, any kernel could grow into a corn plant, but modern farmers don’t save them for a few reasons, Bublitz and McCarthy said.
First, it’s against the rules. Buying and planting hybrid corn means farmers are contractually prohibited from saving seed for planting. The hybrid is patented material, McCarthy said.
Also, seed corn requires special care.
When picked for seed corn, the whole cob is harvested to avoid losing any seeds. The seeds are dried at lower temperatures than field corn. They are sorted for bagging and treated with fungicides.
The hybrid seeds have greater yield potential that fits with today’s cash crop market, Bublitz said.
“It’s not like when you were out there tossing out one seed at a time.”
Jul 20, 2011 at 3:25 p.m.
Suggest removal
I have been seeing a lot of crews on country roads lately. Seriously not being racist at all, but I still have only seen adult minorities doing the labor. Have the companies stopped hiring young adults to do this? And for all of you that like to throw the racism card around I did not say they were illegal or mean anything by this statement.
Aug 24, 2010 at 4:52 p.m.
Suggest removal
"The single rows of “male” corn are knocked down after they’ve done their job of pollinating the “female” corn. The kernels are of no use to seed producers because the plant might have pollinated itself." --- So the males are killed for masterbating... too funny.
Jul 21, 2010 at 10:38 p.m.
Suggest removal
One very hot day we were working in a field on County A east of Johnstown for Tracys and we were going to turn on the center pivot (irrigator for those who are farm challenged) to cool off.
The crews bosses all told us it was hooked up to add fertilizer or such when it ran. (I checked it wasn't) Once THAT was pointed out, they told us if we touched the control box all of us would be fired and be walking back to Jville...
Jul 21, 2010 at 4:11 p.m.
Suggest removal
Dwight I thought you owned a beat farm...
Jul 21, 2010 at 3:45 p.m.
Suggest removal
I thought it was mandatory that all Wisconsin kids had to detassle. My friends and I all did it. Hot, hot, hot!
Jul 21, 2010 at 2:05 p.m.
Suggest removal
I didn't work in detasseling as a kid, but worked at Pioneer pollenating. It was a drag with everyone getting yelled at constantly and having to work in complete silence when my friends over at Syngenta were allowed to talk an have a good time while doing the same work. We did get paid more at Pioneer though.
Jul 21, 2010 at 11:43 a.m.
Suggest removal
I went to a detasseling orientation, but then I was hired at SSI the very next day. Air conditioning! My friends were jealous.
Jul 21, 2010 at 10:25 a.m.
Suggest removal
Oh I will never forget corn detassling. I did it one summer (1971 I think). We met the buses at Craig very early in the morning. We brought our own lunches, food and water with us.
I don't remember a machine that detassled most of it for us. We had to detassle every stalk in that row.
I remember one day we went into the cornfields after a night of heavy rain. A few people lost a shoe in the deep muck in the middle of those long rows of corn!
I'd have to say, though, that it was very hard work, and the only thing that compared to that was harvesting tobacco. Doing both really toughened me up for Army basic training.
Can't believe it was 40 years ago....
Jul 21, 2010 at 9:39 a.m.
Suggest removal
I have never done detasseling but my husband had worked for Hartungs when he was in college and then contracted work after that. My husband is a Tracy and every year we are amazed at the number of phone calls he gets from parents looking for detasseling jobs for their kids. I am also amazed at the number of people out there that tell me they had at one point detasseled for my husbands family and how they learned the value of work ethic from it.
metromilton- Tracy's are back in the seed business but in a different aspect- soybean production. They contract out to grow certain varieties of seed that will be used for seed the next year for other growers.
Jul 21, 2010 at 8:37 a.m.
Suggest removal
The work wasnt as hard as getting up at the butt crack of dawn when your 14! Teens nautrally are nocturnal so it didnt go well with many.
Jul 21, 2010 at 7:06 a.m.
Suggest removal
Corn detasseling job taught much discipline. Many kids quit after just a few days or even on the first day! Anybody remember dragging extra pounds of mud on their shoes after a recent rain? LOL
Jul 20, 2010 at 10:14 p.m.
Suggest removal
I remember corn detassling as a teenager myself. It was hot, long, back-busting work. Makes any job in comparison look rather good. But when your a teenager a nice paycheck at the end of the summer was a good thing. I think more kids today should do work like this as a first job and maybe they would complain a little less the rest of their lives!
Jul 20, 2010 at 10:03 p.m.
Suggest removal
I worked summers at Tracy Farms detasseling in my youth. It was one of the few place kids under 16 could work (had to be 14 to work there).
The work could be near slave like, but for kids it gave us money. We also learned work ethic and the drive to become better citizens later in life.
It has been talked that Tracy might get back into the seed business someday soon???
Jul 20, 2010 at 8:21 p.m.
Suggest removal
Corn detasseling was my first job, working for Tracy's. My friends daughter did it last year, but the biggest problem was getting to work. Where we used to ride our bikes to Craig high school, to catch the bus, now the kids have to find their way out to the company, which is a shame. My friend is a struggling single parent, her daughter wanted the job to help out, but couldn't always find a ride to work. The job is not very accessable to those who might really need it, or benefit from it the most. What happened to busing the kids out there?
Jul 20, 2010 at 6:59 p.m.
Suggest removal
As a kid I did that for them in the 80s was picked up in Verona and they stoped in everytown on the way to Arena to pick up kids and all the fields we worked were in the Arena area.
Jul 20, 2010 at 4:59 p.m.
Suggest removal
The caption is wrong. As I understand it, the Hartung brothers are from Cottage Grove, the first office was there, and the first farm was between there and Madison. The headquarters then moved to Arena. The Janesville seed plant was purchased from Tracy in 1985 and closed in 2000, when a new headquarters near Madison consolidated various operations. Outside of those 15 years (and serving Rock County farmers) the company has no direct connection to Janesville.
Jul 20, 2010 at 4:28 p.m.
Suggest removal
Some of my fondest memories from my early teens were bonding with kids from all over the area while detassling corn.
We spent a lot of time walking around in garbage bags after rainstorms, and I recall drinking from gallon water jugs we froze the night before so the water stayed cool as it melted throughout the day.
The worst was when you happened to step into a row missed by the detassling machine. The other kids would be miles ahead pulling a tassle here and there while you pulled a tassle from every single plant in your row.
Thanks for the memories, Ann Marie.
Before you post a comment, consider this:
Note: GazetteXtra.com does not condone or review every comment. Read more in our User Policy AgreementPost Comment
Commenting requires registration.