Harvest on central Florida corn looks like it will get started later this month. “Everything looks really good with corn. It was very very dry so we had to do a lot of watering to get the crop up out of the ground,” says Hank Scott of Long and Scott Farms. He adds that the most recent Hurricane Idalia brought no damage to its crop, though it did bring much-needed rain and moisture. “We’re in really good shape and we’ll probably have some corn towards the 24th of this month.”
That’s similar to last year’s start time and harvest will continue until the end of November provided there isn’t a freeze or frost that impacts the crop.
Long and Scott Farms grows Scott’s Zellwood Triple Sweet Gourmet Corn™, a variety that’s more challenging to grow. “We put a price on it so it doesn't compete with the big commodity growers that overgrow the corn most of the time,” he says, noting pricing will be similar to last year.
Growing fall corn
What also makes it challenging to grow that corn is the shorter fall days and the potential of hurricanes and tropical storms in the region. Though there are rewards for working under those conditions. “Fall usually gets a better price than spring corn because some people won’t take a chance to grow it in the fall. The disease pressure is also higher because of the humidity so there’s not usually as much corn grown,” says Scott.
As for demand, it should look similar to last year. “We do a lot of business with FreshPoint Holdings which is a division of Sysco and that gets us into the high-end restaurants, the Disney restaurants and others so they’re usually calling ahead to find out when it’s going to be ready,” says Scott.
For more information:
Hank Scott
Long & Scott Farms
[email protected]
www.longandscottfarms.com
