Sweet Corn Scheduler Software

Revolutionary Windows Software Can Reduce and Even Eliminate Most Harvest Gaps!

While the buy local movement, which seems to be here to stay, has made sweet corn growers who sell directly to consumers more optimistic recently, it hasn’t changed the necessity for a continuous supply of freshly picked sweet corn to make growing and selling sweet corn directly to the consumer profitable. The most effective method in the past to bring about a continuous supply of high quality corn was to plant a wide selection of corn varieties with different listed maturity and then stagger these plantings. With this method, the grower depends upon the seed company’s listed seeding to harvest Maturity Dates as well as “normal” corn growing weather. This rather complicated method sometimes results in a continuous supply of corn, but too often is a failure. The problem is usually attributed to summer cool spells along with intermittent heat waves. Often the result is an overabundance of good quality corn one week and the next week the supply of corn is small or even non-existent.

Research by several universities has shown that by using Corn GDD (Growing Degree Days) to schedule plantings, it is possible to practically eliminate the uneven harvest problem—even with abnormal summer cold spells lasting as long as four days! The problem, many growers soon realize who look into it, is that using the Corn GDD method correctly is not simple.

Some growers have heard a presentation or read an article about using Corn GDD and come way feeling that you need a team of NASA scientists to collect the data and make use of it. While this belief is an exaggeration, there is no doubt that scheduling your sweet corn plantings using Corn GDD can be intimidating. Tom Fox, who has supplied central Michigan local markets along with his roadside market, Magicland Farms, with freshly picked sweet corn sweet corn for over 30 years, discussed this problem a few years ago with his son Matthew. In 2008 Tom Fox and his son Matthew, who not only helps out at the farm but is also a Windows software developer, started work together on a Windows based software program that makes use of corn GDD to schedule plantings. This Windows software was tested in 2009 and named Sweet Corn Planting Scheduler. “It worked even better than we planned,” commented Tom Fox. “Despite several unusual summer cold spells in 2009, we had continuous corn from July 24 until frost in early October.” continued Mr. Fox, “What I like about the program, was that it was so simple to use and easy to figure out with all the graphics. It not only gave me an estimate of when I should start picking the patch the day after I planted it but it also was able update this date every day, if I requested it to! It has all the info it needs—GDD for each corn variety, average daily GDD for our area—right in the software!”

We have completely revised this first beta version and we are now coming out with Version 3.01 which makes scheduling sweet corn plantings even easier and has several other new features of interest. We expect to start shipping version 3.01 in early April. Included with the CD-ROM is a quick start instruction manual. The postpaid Introductory price for this software is $79 – which is less than 5 bushels of good quality sweet corn sold directly to the consumer. You also receive a license for it to be used on 5 computers at a single organization (farm, school, company, etc.)

We will start shipping version 3.01 of the software in early April!

You also can order the software by sending a check or money order to:

Magicland Farms
4380 S. Gordon
Fremont, MI 49412