The phrase is an old folk proverb that entered the written record gradually in the mid-1800s. The phrase has a historical agronomic basis, it’s just not relevant today. Public interest in the phrase can be filed under the category: “Perennial Folksy Questions About Corn That News Media Like to Write About”. If I had a penny for every time someone asked me about the popular Corn Belt adage “Knee-high by the Fourth of July” over the 40+ years I spent as Purdue’s Extension Corn Specialist, I would have a lot of pennies and no where to spend them in today’s economy. The news media especially love to publish folksy articles this time of year on this well-known “metric” of growing corn and have been doing so for well over one hundred years. The most rigorous tracing of the origin of the phrase (etymologist Barry Popik’s 2012 article) finds the saying[Read More…]
