growing corn

Ooo, I need to read this whole thread. My corn is small, but looking good. I'll post a pic, tomorrow.

I'm glad I caught up on this thread. My SQ and Gem corn are not serious plantings but I wouldn't mind a few heads. I think I didn't plant the seeds deep enough in the BTE strip for them to get a good anchor. The SQ especially is floppy. Maybe if I use the Florida weave it will help them stand up. They are in two, 10-foots rows 6" apart.

I just looked at the corn that I started indoors and it's germinated!!!

I can now say without a doubt in my head that soaking your corn before planting is a great thing!
Some of my corn was over 3 years old and still germinated at the same if not higher rate than the corn I purchased this year.

While I may still have to direct sow some of it, I have more than enough to begin my Three Sisters with and at least 1 additional square.

I'm so excited!  Here's hoping it grows well!

Squirrel dug up and ate all my direct planted corn, beans and squash seeds.

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:Squirrel dug up and ate all my direct planted corn, beans and squash seeds.

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:Squirrel dug up and ate all my direct planted corn, beans and squash seeds.

CC

That's awful, CC.   Will you replant in peat pots or is it too late there? You could always buy plants. That's what I had to do after spider mites wiped out almost everything I started inside over the winter.

That was the last of the corn so unless I trip over more seed in my travels I have no plans to try again this year. Last years little plants were distroyed by racoons. I'm already making plans to cut more netting this afternoon and cover ALL the boxes going forward.

CapeCoddess wrote:That was the last of the corn so unless I trip over more seed in my travels I have no plans to try again this year.  Last years little plants were distroyed by racoons. I'm already making plans to cut more netting this afternoon and cover ALL the boxes going forward.

Ugh. What an unpleasant set back. I do not like squirrels.
More netting sounds like a good plan.

CapeCoddess wrote:Squirrel dug up and ate all my direct planted corn, beans and squash seeds.

CC

Sorry to hear that CC.  It happens here as well including with sunflower seeds. I have chicken wire cages on some SFG beds and we use chicken wire and hardware cloth where necessary in the regular soil beds when direct sowing some seeds. Nothing fancy -- just enough to give the seeds a chance to get growing.

I was just out inspecting my corn patch and wondering if the leaves are yellowing a tad or am I being hyper just now.  When I came in I saw in Fiz's thread that Yolo was pointing out how much nitrogen corn needs.  So I went looking for some guidelines.

1. When should I apply nitrogen?  The crop needs little nitrogen during early vegetative stages to about the fifth leaf development stage. [u]The largest portion of the total nitrogen taken up by corn occurs during the eighth leaf to VT (tasseling) development stages.[/u] Nitrogen uptake is mostly done shortly after pollination. Thus, applying N before the V8 development stage is best. [u]Research has shown that if applications are done around V6, it is very rare to see yield loss due to N stress[/u]. This is because most soils in Illinois can provide sufficient N to satisfy the demands of young corn plants.  Of course, if a portion of the total nitrogen was applied preplant or at planting, a delay in application of supplemental nitrogen is not likely going to cause plant nitrogen stress. In cases where no nitrogen was applied, or the nitrogen supply is very low, make it a priority to apply early (preferably before V6) to avoid loss of yield potential. wrote:

Underlining emphasis done by me.

The Silver Queen is tasseling right now but no ears are visible. Should I sprinkle blood meal on the wood chips and water down well? Or is growing in my amended dirt strip sufficient regarding nitrogen?

Anyone else have a problem with early tassels that shed pollen before the ears show silk?

The baby ears first appear as tiny little clusters of leaves near a "joint" on the main stalk.  I wish I had a picture to post here!  At that stage, they aren't recognizable as cobs. 

Give it a few days, and see how the tassels develop, as well as any nascent cobs you may have.  Sounds like you may need to do some hand pollination.

sanderson wrote:The Silver Queen is tasseling right now but no ears are visible.  Should I sprinkle blood meal on the wood chips and water down well?  Or is growing in my amended dirt strip sufficient regarding nitrogen?

Anyone else have a problem with early tassels that shed pollen before the ears show silk?

I believe it is too late for Blood Meal if the corn is already tasseling.  I don't think Blood Meal is very fast acting.  

Pollen dropping from tassels before the silk emerges on the ears is a sign of stress.  Either too low nitrogen or not enough water is usually the problem.  It happened to me one summer.  A whole 4 x 8 bed of corn planting was wasted because the pollen dropped before the ears emerged.  

But if I remember correctly, the tassels emerge and then a little while later the ears just start to emerge and then the pollen drops.  It takes a while (not too long though) after the tassels appear before they drop the pollen.  So you have to hold your breath to see if it will all develop according to plan.  This is one of the reasons I used succession planting this year.  I planted a small stand (3 x 4 feet) of corn every week for six weeks.  So if one stand did not drop the pollen at the correct time, maybe the pollen dropping on the next stand of corn could be used to hand pollinate some of the ears developing late on the prior stand of corn.

I doubt that growing in your amended dirt strip would supply enough nitrogen.  Maybe if it was heavily amended with manure ???????????

I will step up the watering on the corn part at least. The strip was amended since Oct 2015. First with ramial chips. Then fall leaves, horse manure, bagged compost topped with plain wood chips. Last summer I grew sunflowers as conversation pieces. We had a good spring of rain this year so I felt it was worth trying tomatoes in part of it and 2 types of corn, sorghum and okra.

Donna, Grew corn the first 2 years so I recognize the starts of ears. One year the pollen dropped too early. The second year, much better coordinated.

Continuing the corn side discussion from my hail damage thread here - I just noticed this morning that my container corn plants are sending up tassels as well. Yesterday I added chicken manure pellets to both pots, topped up the soil a bit, added some of the slow release fertilizer on the top of the soil. Once the rain stops tomorrow, I'll continue with the water soluble 10-15-10 fertilizer. At this point I'm just trying anything and everything I have without going out and getting blood meal (based on what Yolos said) to see if I can have a shot of getting an ear or two!  Will keep you all posted!

Hey all!

Update on my container corn - we've got pollen shed! Of the three plants in containers two of them have two silked ears each and the third one is tasseling and just starting to show the first signs of silk. Hoping to get six ears from these three plants (although I know the lower ears tend to be inferior sometimes), and I've got four more stalks growing in the bed.

First picture is of the four silked ears, and second picture is right after I tapped the tassels and pollen came floating down. You can see some shedding in the top right corner. For good measure, I snipped off some tassels and hand pollinated each ear. I won't snip off any more, will grab a paintbrush from the dollar store and continue that way. Hoping to be grilling these up in a couple of weeks or so!

I have not found that wire keeps squirrels out, they simply dig underneath.  The only thing I find which keep them out is plastic bottles, bottom end cut off and well into the ground, and then the earth drawn up around the bottle.  I remove when the corn is sticking several inches out of the top of the bottle and before the plant becomes wedged into the neck of the bottle.
Squashes stay under bottles until they fill them.  I have some 1.3 Am Gallons and a few 2 Am Gallons.

Quick question about final ear size. At what stage does the actual ear stop growing larger? Does it continue to grow after pollination or is it only kernel development at that point? I can't seem to find a straight answer when searching online. I'm hoping I don't end up with itty bitty ears!

Fiz wrote:Quick question about final ear size. At what stage does the actual ear stop growing larger? Does it continue to grow after pollination or is it only kernel development at that point? I can't seem to find a straight answer when searching online. I'm hoping I don't end up with itty bitty ears!

Depending on the type you are growing, the ear slowly fills in, and falls away from the stalk a bit.   The silk gets toasted, and the ear is filled out.

Thanks Scorpio! I'm growing Peaches and Cream.

Here is a nice short blog about corn pollination.  It is written by one of our forum members - I think her name if sfg4uKim but that may be slightly wrong. = Kim Roman.

Here is a short passage from the original blog:

"Corn has both male and female parts on the same plant—called the tassel, where the pollen is made, and the silk that receives the pollen. Each silk, if pollinated, will become a kernel of corn. If the silk doesn’t get pollinated, it won’t produce a kernel.  The first silk you see is attached to the bottom of the corn cob and they work their way up the ear—this is why you sometimes see fewer kernels at the top of the cob.
The pollen is shed from the tassel starting in the middle of the center spike and works its way down to the lower branches of the tassel. Pollen starts shedding about two to three days before the silk starts emerging and keeps going for about five to eight days. The largest pollen shed is on day three. On the other hand, the silk is usually receptive for up to ten days. In general the pollen of one plant doesn’t fertilize the silk of that same plant. So, the male is ready before the female is and he usually goes outside the home to make babies. Hhhhhmmmm!
When you go to the store and pull back the husk on the corn and see a lot of gaps, it indicates that the pollen didn’t shed at the same time as the silk developed. This is a problem. When a silk is successfully pollinated and the “baby” (kernel) starts to form, usually 1-3 days after pollination, the silk will detach from the kernel and start to turn brown and dry up. Unfertilized ovules (kernels) are still white and attached to the silk."


https://patch.com/maryland/glenburnie/bp--blog-how-to-grow-corn-the-square-foot-gardening-way

I was not watering the corn much, thinking that by now it has good roots etc. I did a google search..... Right before and during pollination is the time corn needs the most water. So I set a sprinkler in the middle of the bed and gave it a long soaking. I hope I worked that out early enough. The corn is tassling and silking right now. I am also fussing because I planted cosmos in hte bed as well, and it is about as tall as the corn.

We have had a couple wind storms lately and so far the corn has stayed up! Thanks to Yolo's ideas about a perimeter fence and sticking poles across.

Fingers crossed......

Turan wrote:The corn is tassling and silking right now. 

Mine too. I've watered consistently, but the plants are looking kind of tattered. I hope everything's okay.

Picked 4 ears of Silver Queen with a total of 7 plump kernels. Next year I will have a support frame in place so the tassels won't be on the ground.