ACW Gamer | 10 Sep 2014 8:31 a.m. PST |
Is my corn too tall? I would like to know before I plant more: link |
guineapigfury | 10 Sep 2014 1:28 p.m. PST |
Assuming the base heights are the same, it looks a little tall but that may be due to camera angle. It looks very well done. At Antietam, the Confederate troops were concealed in the cornfield until Union troops saw their bayonets. Not sure if that was light reflecting from within the cornfield or if the bayonets stuck out above the corn periscope style. My guess is the corn was about 7-8 feet tall with your average soldier a little over 5'8". What scale are those models? See this thread: TMP link |
ACW Gamer | 11 Sep 2014 8:50 a.m. PST |
These are 28mm Perrys….thanks for the link! |
vagamer63 | 01 Aug 2015 10:38 p.m. PST |
Going by the old saying my relatives from Iowa used to say: "Head high by the 4th of July!" meant it would be a good crop by harvest time! By mid September corn would be about 30 – 40% higher with a fair amount of summer rain and sunshine! |
Cleburne1863 | 11 Aug 2015 2:13 p.m. PST |
I thought it was "knee high" by the fourth of July? |
fredfeenstra | 24 Aug 2015 10:33 a.m. PST |
How high is your corn in October? I am no agriculturalist but I thought i would have been harvested by then. It sometimes amazes me to see cornfields in ACW scenarios such as Stones River, as late as end December |
1968billsfan | 11 Oct 2016 1:29 p.m. PST |
I was interested in this and did some research. There were many landraces of corn in the US, so you can have any height anywhere- sometimes adjacent valleys would have vastly different types and heights. During the ACW period, corn was (mostly) cultivated by a single horse drawn plow which cut weeds and piled the soil onto the roots of the corn plants. The plowing was done from two directions and there was plenty of room to walk between plants. Hand chopping was used to get at additional weeks but care taken not to hurt the roots.(These days corn is planted very densely in 1-dimentional rows). Harvesting was not done by motor driven combines ! There were several methods. One was to cut the base of the plant with a corn knife and tie up multiple plants in shocks, that could be gathered later to get the corn and plants for fodder. Another was to drive a wagon while walkers would pull ears and throw the corn against a bang board into the wagon. Another, low labor input method, was to walk through with a small horse drawn wagon and collect the ears and leave the cornstalks standing. Later cattle or pigs could be put into the field to finish missed corn, eat the fodder and manure the field. So you could have standing corn plants in December. |
Volleyfire | 03 Aug 2017 2:49 a.m. PST |
So you could have standing corn plants in December. Yes, but they'd be dead and nearly white not green in colour by then as most corn is depicted on the wargames table. Would varieties sown 150 years ago have been as tall as current ones? With advances in plant genetics in recent times you'd be inclined to think perhaps not, since other crops such as wheat and barley have altered, in fact they have shrunk due to farmers wanting varieties that don't lodge (flatten) every time it rains, so tall straw stems have been bred out in those. |
Volleyfire | 03 Aug 2017 2:50 a.m. PST |
I'd have liked to have seen your photo in the link ACW Gamer but you too have succumbed to the new curse of photobucket wanted a ransom for hosting your pics if you wish to share them with us. |
Musketier | 12 Dec 2017 10:56 a.m. PST |
Wheat and barley certainly have been bred shorter in recent times to accommodate harvesting combines, so "newer" doesn't necessarily equate to "taller". |
historygamer | 12 Dec 2017 2:42 p.m. PST |
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d effinger | 16 Feb 2018 8:37 p.m. PST |
It's fine being very tall. Both wheat and corn today is engineered to be shorter. It matures faster now and doesn't spend it's 'time' growing a stalk instead of the product. I've heard this from numerous historians and scientists. That's why during the war you could actually hide in a wheat field but nearly impossible today. |
Old Contemptibles | 05 Mar 2018 10:43 p.m. PST |
They look too tall to me, but this guy may disagree. YouTube link
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1968billsfan | 15 Dec 2019 5:35 a.m. PST |
Bloody Butcher corn is 8 to 12 foot tall |