if you are working with a small space or if like me you just didn't get your
ground worked in time to get sweet corn in never fear sweet corn is relatively
easy to grow in large containers and i'll show you how
there are just a few key things to keep in mind for a successful sweet corn
container crop as you may have guessed your sweet corn
is going to need a pretty large container what i have here are 20
gallon containers and i would not recommend going any
smaller than this the next very important aspect of
growing container corn is your potting media so with corn it is
a very heavy feeder you've got big plants in a pretty tight
spot so you are going to want to go with the
best quality potting media that you can afford
basically what i've gotten here is actually a half
and half mix of mushroom compost and just a garden
potting soil but that mushroom compost is really the key
it is full of a lot of really rich nutrients
and is really going to help feed that corn through the long season
i fill my containers to within about one to two inches from the top
you want to leave just a little space in the tops there so that when you water
the water is not running out of the container but you still want to get it
quite full i will then plant six seeds per container
actually i end up doing 12 seeds i double up the seeding
and then thin after everything is germinated and that's just to make sure
that i do get six plants because once in a while you'll
have a seed or two that won't germinate the next key to keep in mind is
pollination so sweet corn does better planted in
groups or blocks than in one or two long straight rows
and that is because when the pollen drops off of these tassels it needs to
fall on the silks in order to properly
pollinate the ears it has a higher chance of doing so when
the sweet corn is grouped together so by planting these six to a container
and if you have the room placing several containers
very near to each other that's going to help to ensure that all of the ears get
properly pollinated another key is water water water
so as you can imagine these plants are taking up a lot of water during growth
and these containers tend to dry out very very quickly
so in a typical summer where we don't get a whole lot of rain through july and
august i'm watering these containers about
every two to three days and they will typically get a couple
gallons per container so usually i actually will just fill up a five
gallon bucket and bring it out here and dump it on the plants
another very important key for success is
feeding your sweet corn so as i mentioned sweet corn is a very heavy
feeder especially of nitrogen so it is important to fertilize your
sweet corn properly what i typically do is once the plants
are about six inches tall i will give them a dose of slow release all natural
a high nitrogen formulation of fertilizer um this year i used
the sweet corn food from gurney seed and nursery i think it's an
8-2-2 formulation about a cup of this granulated fertilizer per
container now depending on how your sweet corn is
doing you can come back a little later in the season like right as they're
starting to set ears and give it another feeding between the
initial feeding and the compost in the containers my
corn didn't need a second feeding but your corn will tell you if it needs
additional feeding because the color of the foliage will go
from a nice deep rich green to kind of a washed out green or like a
yellowish green and that's often your corn telling you
it needs a little more food and finally the moment we've all been
waiting for picking your ripe sweet corn i'd hate to have
you go through all this work only to pick your ears at the wrong time
so a few cues that you can look for to know when your ears are optimally ripe
are first of all these silks so you're going to want to watch for the silk to
change color it'll go from a light kind of blonde color to
this dark brown and start to dry down the other thing
you'll want to check is that your ears feel plump and filled
out within this husk and if you're really
unsure you can actually peel just a little bit of the husk
back and you can actually peek in there at that ear
so you can see this one's not all the way filled out so just close that back
up you can even like do a little tape on
there a little rubber band and let that go for
a couple more days let's look over here i'm going to
show you a properly mature ear so here we have one silks are dried down
it feels full and plump ah snaps right off the stalk
and there we have it a perfectly plump filled out ear of corn you'll also be
able to tell when you press into these kernels
they're very plump and juicy and they're not starting to dry up yet
so that is exactly where you want to pick that ear
so let me know in the comments below have you grown sweet corn in containers
or do you plan to grow it in the future i'd love to hear from you
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my channel growfully with jenna thanks for watching and i'll see you
next time