- I love growing corn,
but I've made a ton of mistakes growing corn,
even this year.
So in this video,
I'm gonna go over all the different mistakes
you might be making growing your corn
so you can have an incredible harvest.
So here we are in my backyard mini-corn patch.
This is the third one I've grown this year.
I have a huge patch of corn
I'm gonna show you in just a second.
But at the end of the video, I'm gonna open up an ear
and we'll see if I have good pollination
and a good ear of corn.
But right now, cultivate that like button for epic ears
And let's crack into the mistakes.
The first mistake, and the most critical,
is just not planting enough corn.
When I get messages from you guys
saying, "what's wrong with my corn,"
it's usually just because you only have
a couple stalks of corn.
It needs a lot.
I would say a block of at least four feet by four feet
because it's a wind-pollinated plant.
This is the male part, the tassel right here.
It literally drops pollen down.
You see it blowing in the wind right now.
If you don't have enough,
the pollen's just gonna kind of blow away.
It has to land on the silks, which is the female part,
and actually traverse down those silks into the ear
to pollinate each individual kernel.
So the problem you're gonna run into
is by not planting enough,
the pollen just simply won't hit the silks
and you will not get enough corn.
Mistake number two is spotty germination.
Corn is a big seed, but it's a very hard seed,
and so when you direct sew it in the ground,
much like we did here in this attempted corn maze,
you can see the outer row just really didn't terminate.
And the reason why is because after its sprouted up,
our irrigation system just didn't get enough water
out to this corner here,
or really any of the corners around the whole maze.
I do have a little maze here, so it's still kind of cool.
But what you need to think about with corn is making sure
that the moisture level is consistent
the entire time you're germinating it.
You can start corn indoors or in trays and transplant.
The only thing I would say
is it tends to take a little bit to settle in.
So when you're germinating corn,
make sure you lay down maybe some mulch
to lock in that moisture
or make sure that you're irrigating the entire patch.
Mistake number three is improper soil preparation.
So here in the corn patch on the Epic Homesteading channel,
you can see exactly what we did if you want to,
but we basically leveled the ground out
and tilled in a very healthy amount of compost.
Now, I know we often don't till here in the gardening world.
I simply did not have enough nutrition in this soil,
specifically nitrogen, to make sure
that the corn was growing nice and tall.
Corn loves nitrogen.
So you need to loosen the soil up
and you need to add in a healthy amount of organic matter.
So if you're in a situation where that's not the case,
maybe it would've germinated,
maybe it would've even grown a little bit,
but without proper nutrition
and with way too compacted soil,
it would've stood at no chance.
The fourth mistake you can run into with corn
is just improper fertilization.
So corn, it's actually a grass.
It's not a grain, contrary to what you might think.
We've evolved it over time through selection
and it's just a really crazy specific grass.
So, what does grass need?
It's a leafy plant, it needs nitrogen.
So if you have too little nitrogen in your soil,
that's probably gonna be the number one deficiency
that your corn will have.
So, how do you fix that?
Well, a great way to do that is to use any sort
of organic granular fertilizer.
I personally think that chicken manure,
especially from your own chickens, if you can do it,
is a great way to do it
because chicken manure is extremely high in nitrogen
and that nitrogen is very active.
But if you're seeing stunted growth,
light, yellowing leaves, nitrogen is probably the problem.
Mistake number five, watering.
You can really mess your corn up with improper watering.
It's a plant that wants to remain
more or less constantly moist in the soil.
Remember, it's growing really tall,
has a lot of structure to build,
and so one of the best ways to do that
is to put it on some kind of irrigation
or just make sure you don't forget to water.
It needs at least an inch or two every single week
and the best way to make sure you keep it there
is some kind of mulch.
Whatever's local to you is great.
We're huge fans of straw here at Epic Gardening,
but you can use fallen leaves
if you're in a more cold climate
that actually has leaves that fall.
We don't have that here, so I'm a little jealous.
But some sort of mulch, three, even four inches,
is great to lock that moisture in.
Mistake number six is your corn just kind of flopping over.
You can see this one just, it's falling.
Well, part of the reason why
is because it's become a little top heavy.
These are some big, healthy ears.
They need to get harvested.
But if you transplant your corn,
I sometimes recommend transplanting a little bit deeper
because corn being such a tall plant,
having a lot of leaves, catching the wind,
and being a wind-pollinated plant,
you kind of want it in an area that gets some airflow,
but it can topple over.
So if you transplant, transplant a little bit deeper.
And if not,
sometimes you can even just tie your corn together
sort of in a big bunch.
Take some twine, kind of tie it together,
so it all supports itself.
Or if you're really getting particular,
you can individually stake with some bamboo stakes.
Keep it upright so it doesn't crack itself in half
before it's ready to harvest.
Our last set of mistakes really comes
at the critical point of the harvest.
So I'm gonna harvest one for you right now
and talk about how you really can mess this up.
So remember, these are the silks.
These are the female part of the plant.
They need to look completely dead.
So about, I don't know, 18 to 22 days after your silks form
is when you should at least be thinking
about harvesting the corn.
So this one here, to be honest with you,
is probably still not quite ready.
You want to have these silks so dry
that you could almost slap 'em and they just come right off.
You can also give it a bit of a feel
and kind of see, hey, how's this feeling?
I actually feel there's a little mistake probably
in this corn.
So let me open up one that's perfectly ready right now.
Take a look at these silks.
What you have is very dry silks, very brown.
If I pull lightly, they come right out.
Now, even this might be slightly early,
but, hey, I'm gonna show it to you anyways.
A good way to test while the plant is still intact,
while you haven't removed it,
you can actually just peel this down just a little bit,
just enough to reveal the tip of the ear.
There we go.
So I've got pretty good pollination here.
You can see there's a little problem in here
that I'll talk about in a second.
But what you want to do
is you want to kind of just poke one of these kernels
with your fingertip.
Come in, ooh, give it a little poke
and you wanna see sort of a milky fluid come out.
If you see that, you're in a good spot.
If it's kind of gummed up and a little bit eh,
then you're waiting too long.
And if you don't see anything at all
and it's just really small and unformed,
you've waited not long enough, it's a little bit too early.
So let me pull the rest of this off
and I'll discuss a couple more mistakes you might find.
So first of all,
overall we have a really nice ear of corn here,
but there's this guy.
Now, this guy is a corn worm.
This little guy is the bane of growing corn.
I wouldn't so much call this a mistake
as just a thing that happens.
It's a moth that lays an egg right at the top.
Comes in, munches off.
We've harvested this early enough
that it actually hasn't eaten too much.
So you might say, "ew, this is gross.
I'm not gonna eat this corn."
Don't be like that.
Just cut the tip off.
We'll feed these to our chickens in a second.
But this is overall a really solid ear of corn.
Now, let me show you what happens
when maybe that corn ear is not so solid.
Let's put this down for a second
and let's harvest this guy right here.
Now, how do I know it's not quite ready?
Well, these don't come off quite as easily.
They're not quite there yet.
I can't just tug 'em right off.
I still see pretty intact silks right here.
And I'm squeezing it and I'm knowing
that I haven't really pollinated this top bit.
But a good sign is that the ear is kind of pushing away
from the main stalk,
showing that the base is developed enough
to kind of force it away.
So let's crack it off.
We'll twist it and let's see what we've got in here.
So I'm already gonna guess
that the tip is not gonna be pollinated.
So here's what happens
when you don't have perfect pollination.
Now, this is still a pretty good ear of corn.
If I pop the kernel, I'm still in a pretty good spot here
but you can see how the silk
just didn't all the way pollinate the tip,
and I also have one of those corn worms here.
So what do you do in this case?
I would say don't beat yourself up.
It's really not that big a deal.
Again, you can just cut this off
and you have a pretty good ear of corn.
Oftentimes when the very, very tip doesn't pollinate,
it just means that the weather might have been too hot,
water might have been a little bit low,
and it's gonna prioritize these kernels down here.
So let me toss those corn worms to the chickens
and we'll give this a little bite and see how it tastes.
Like I said, don't waste an entirely good ear
just 'cause something weird was at the top.
What I like to do is just chop that tip off,
that'll go to the chickens as well,
and I'll give this a rinse and a quick taste.
So this is a sweet corn.
Don't do this with a dent or a flower corn,
but you can eat corn straight off of the stalk.
I think it's still a little bit better, personally, cooked,
but it is quite nice this way.
Mm, perfectly sweet.
You know you hit it right
when you get that little milky residue coming out.
It is so delicious and so sweet.
Grow your own sweet corn, guys.
Hopefully these mistakes help.
Subscribe for more tips.
Good luck in the garden.
Keep on growing.
(quiet funk music)