My last visit to my maize farm was an exciting one, as this time around, I'm met with a delightful sight of the tasseling stage of the maize plant, signifying that pollination is about to take place and harvest is around the corner. It's been raining constantly for the past few days, and I haven't had the chance to really do much at the farm, but when I did pay a visit this weekend, I was thrilled by what I saw, also did some irrigation work and I know I'll soon be ripping the fruit of my labor on the farm.

Each stage of maize development comes with its own blessings and challenges, right from planting, to germination, emergence, seedlings, vegetable growth, to the tesseling that we presently have with my maize, then to silking, reproduction, and harvest that would come pretty soon. To start with, in case you don't know, the tasseling stage on maize is when the male flower shows up or grows at the top of the maize; most people call it the first reproduction stage.

When maize arrives at this stage, it's always a thing of joy because we know that the plant is getting mature by the day and that we're drawing closer to pollination time. Weather always plays a huge role during pollination; not too much of everything makes the maize thrive. Unfortunately, I've been dealing with continuous rain in the last few days, which can wash off the pollen, so the weather needs to be favorable for the maize to grow well.

Since it's been raining all day, I had to dive into the farm to work on the irrigation system, paving the way for rainwater to flow out of the farm land without soaking or oversaturating the soil. That's what I've done, and now I'm just looking forward to the maize yielding and thriving well when it's time.

Although some of the maize have already evolved to the silking stage, as you can see from the pictures, the majority of them haven't; only a few have, and that's why I'm not really focusing on them for now. I'll take note and observe their progress on my next visit, and I hope for a bountiful harvest on my maize farm.

All photos are mine.