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Sweet Corn is one of those crops that a lot of home gardeners have a fascination about because of the fact
they think "Oh I'd love to have my own fresh Sweet Corn in my own home vegetable garden." Well,
sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. The reason why is the fact that
if you want to
have Sweet Corn in your garden you're going to have to make sure you provide enough space
to plant enough plants
so it gets proper pollination.
In order for you to have
ears that are going to be
good for the table
you have to have a lot of cross-pollination of corn where the pollen comes from the tassel down to the silks
and then after that happens
the kernels start to form, so again, you need a lot of plants
to insure you a good crop of corn.
And even with that
there are sometimes problems with insuring a good crop of corn and one of the problems
that is a major pitfall
is the fact that you can have
what is called Corn Rootworm Beetles
find out where your corn is at
and they dearly love to feed on silks. As you can see right here, this ear
is basically without any kind of silk whatsoever
and what that means is
is that when pollen is shed from the tassel
there is no silk
for the pollen to go to.
Every one of those silks is attached to a kernel of corn.
Without pollination,
you get no
kernel development. So basically
we're looking at an ear
that's going to be without any useful kernels.
Corn has its issues when you come to
growing it in the home garden. If you want to have good corn or you want to have corn at all
you're going to have to apply some type of control measure to keep the Corn Rootworm Beetles
from feeding on the silk
and once that happens, again, insuring good pollination with enough rows of corn
you can probably get a few ears of corn. That's all you're going to get. One ear per stalk.
It's nice to have fresh corn. Sometimes it's better to allow the the local
farmer to grow the corn for you and enjoy it.
Otherwise,
what we have here now is basically really nice halloween decorations.