I'm about a hair over 6 foot tall and my sweet corn here has tasseled out it's
gotten as tall it's gonna get probably about six and a half foot tall maybe
seven foot tall in some spots and some nice-looking tassels got some silk
formation here got ears starting to form and I want to tell you all about it so
this here is my spring early spring planting of sweet corn this is a triple
sweet variety called Avalon and happy with it so far now the last time I
showed you this corn plot some of this over here on the end which is a little
shorter wasn't looking as good but we shot some twenty twenty twenty through
that drip tape there and got it turned around it's looking a lot better now all
my leaves are nice and green here everything's looking good been able to
keep plenty of water to it although we've had some rain lately and long as
we don't ever see these leaves curling up like that we know that plants not
stressed and that's going to be best for that plant long term so happy with how
this plot of corn has turned out so far here and really excited to try some of
this white triple sweet corn because we've never grown this one before now as
a little side note here's that plot of temptress bicolor quad sweet corn we
planted a couple videos ago and I need to get in there and thin that out but I
got a good stand there for the most part I just need to get in there and thin
those plants out to about one every four to six inches or so now back to this
Avalon here so really happy with how tall the plants got when they tasseled
out now this isn't always the case are always the rule but I like my plants you
know to be six foot tall or so before they tassel from my experiences that if the
plants are short when they tassel out that means they didn't get some kind of
nutrient along the way now I've grown plenty good crops of sweet corn with
plants like this that are about five foot tall
tasseled out and these stalks right here will probably produce good ears as well
and sometimes it depends on variety some varieties are shorter than others some
varieties will tassel out earlier than others but this one here seems to get on
up about six or seven foot tall in ideal situations over there where it was
better fed where I had dumped a little more compost we got those nice tall
plants back there now the only thing I'd like to see that I've done a little bit
better I'd like to have a little thicker stalk down there those are probably
about the diameter of a quarter or so I'd like to see a little bit wider or
thicker stalk and it probably had something to do with the fact I didn't
hilll them up a second time like I should have after I healed him the first time
with that High Arc Wheel Hoe we got a good rain it kind of beat down my Hill a
little bit and corn shot up and it was just too tall to hill again with the
wheel hoe and I probably should have came in here with a rake and hilled them
up one more time that might have made a little stronger root system and maybe
some thicker stalks but you know considering that still pretty happy with
everything how green everything is and the timing of the tassel formation and
the silk formation there you see what can happen and I know this because it's
happened to me is if your corn plants aren't well fed well fertilized and well
watered the timing of your tassel formation and your silt formation can be
off and that's going to affect your pollination which is going to affect
your eventual harvest don't matter how healthy those corn plants look if you
don't get good pollination you're just not going to get good ears of corn so we
always like to keep an eye on our tassel formation and our silk formation if the
corn tassels earlier and there's no silks down there to pollinate then
you're in trouble because all your pollen is going to be gone by the time
your silks get there so that timing is really important which leads us into a
little deeper discussion about corn pollination
so corn is wind-pollinated doesn't require any
insects to pollinate it and we have male and female flowers so the male flower is
what we call the tassel up here and the pollen is on these little grains right
here and if we just shake this plant a little bit I don't let the camera
resolution let us see it we can should be able to see some dust kind of coming
off there and that's all the pollen there is tons of pollen on this one
tassel here more than enough to pollinate the ears of corn that are
going to be on the stalk so that's the male flower and then down here the silks
or what's going to you know eventually become the ear is the female flower and
each one of these silks here represents an individual kernel on that ear so to
get a nice full ear we need every one of those silks to become pollinated now
some sweet corn varieties will have these kind of pinkish red silks some
varieties won't that's just a pigment called anthocyanin in there you'll see that
in some varieties there but we want to make sure we get good pollination so we
get nice full ears and that's why we always recommend planting at least three
rows of corn side-by-side and if you can plant them in a square plot like this
it's going to give you better pollination if you just got one row
there you might get some decent pollination but if the wind is just
blowing one way it could be blowing the pollen to the right of the left and not
in the linear direction of the row and you might not get as good of pollination
so that's why we always like to say plant it in a square plot and plant at
least three rows side by side to get real good pollination and you can kind
of tell if everything's pollinating correctly because you can see those
little grains off the tassels all over the corn leaves there and if we look
down here we see them all over the ground there so it looks like everything
is pollinating pretty well now we get plenty of wind here so
long as we got our corn enough of it planted and planted in a relatively
square plot usually pollination is not a big issue but if you live somewhere
you're not getting a lot of wind or maybe you've just planted one or two
rows and you're worried about the pollination I'll show you something you
can do just take you a long pipe or a long stick or something you can go
through here and just kind of brush back and forth across some tassels there and
that's going to make sure that pollen gets nice and scattered all over the
place there so that's a good little insurance policy if you're worried about
your corn pollinating correctly and when you start seeing those silks form there
that's when you need to start being on the lookout for any corn earworm damage
and maybe even preventively treating any damage that could occur now I haven't
seen any signs of any worms chewing on these plants usually you can tell if that's
happening pretty early when the plants are you know 3 4 foot tall you'll see
some nibbling on the leaves kind of down inside the curl where those new leaves
are emerging also sometimes if you got real bad corn earworm pressure they can
gnaw off these tassels right here which means no pollination and that's not good
even though I haven't seen any damage yet I know down here in the south we can
get corn earworms and so I always like to treat them and the best thing to take
care of corn earworms is this stuff here our garden insect spray which has spinosad
in it and spinosad works really good on corn earworms the trick is you've got to
spray the silks that's where those ear worms are going to get in there on that
corn and start eating on them and leave that kind of nasty mess at the top of
that ear so you want to make sure you spray the silks so what we do is we mix
1 to 2 ounces of this per gallon of water we come in here with a little hand
sprayer or a backpack sprayer and we just spray right along here around waist
level where these silks are we don't have to worry about spraying the entire
plant just where these silks are where those worms are liable to be in there
eating on your corn ears now we planted this corn here
to the best of my memory around the middle of March here it is the end of
May and we're probably looking at about a couple more weeks before those ears
are nice and full so from middle of March April May June we're looking at
about 90 days so planting it in the early spring like this it's going to
come off pretty true to the actual listed maturity date now this temptress
quad sweet that needs thinning here we planted it early to middle May and it's
going to be a lot hotter for this corn than it was for that Avalon behind me
here and so this is probably going to come off a lot faster it may not get as
tall which would be all right we kind of expect that when those heat units crank
up on into the summer so we'll just be sitting right here waiting a couple more
weeks for this white triple sweet Avalon corn to get ready I can't wait to try
some this is one of the things I look forward to kind of the beginning of
summer is that sweet corn getting ready having some friends over doing a
Low country boil just you know eating it all up I'll eat corn
three four and outside of the week when this stuff gets ready I can't get enough
of it and so when that does happen when it does get ready we'll be glad to show
you what it looks like do a little taste test and see just how good it is so make
sure your corn gets pollinated so you got them nice full ears make sure you
feed it well make sure your timings right and if you don't get a lot of wind
grab you a stick and give it a little help I'll put some links below to
both these corn varieties we talked about today and a link to that spinosad
that you're going to need to take care of them corn earworms if you enjoyed
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new video and check out these two videos right here I think you'll really enjoy
those as well we'll see you next time