Every gardener wants to grow sweet corn
In today's episode we will look at how easy it is
to grow sweet corn in containers
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Although we will cover sweet corn in today's video
There are several different types of corn
Field corn is generally used in its dry form
To make a lot of industrial products
Sweet corn is a variety with soft and tender kernels
And the ones that we love to eat
And the final a variety of corn is called specialty corn
And I will be covering
Specialty corn in a future episode
So for our containers he will be growing
this variety of corn which is organic called golden Bantam
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Corn can be either sowed in seed starting mix in individual pots
And once the seats are sowed
They usually germinate in about 10 days or so
And you can also sow the corn seeds directly in the container
And they will germinate as well
I recommend using a container
5 gallons or larger
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So let's look at what kind of pests
You need to deal with when you're growing corn
So the most common type of pests that attack corn
are the corn earworm and the corn borer
And you can see some damage that's caused by some of the
bad insects that attack the corn plant
and you need to take some action
So for most of the corn pests its pretty easy
You can use Neem Oil very effectively
To kill almost all types of insects that attack corn
So what you basically do is mix
The required quantity of Nem Oil
In a gallon tank sprayer
And mix it with water and once that is done
you just use this mix too spray your corn plants
Now if you want a detailed video on how to do this
please check out the video on your screen and you should be able to see
this process and a lot more detail
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to avoid any harm to beneficial insects like bees
It is recommended that you use Neem Oil
spray late in the evening when the beneficial insects are not active
So corn plant produces these lush
green leaves really thick stems
and a lot of foliage and that usually means that for such plants like corn
you need to supply a very high
nitrogen fertilizer all
through the growing season so what does this mean when growing corn
well it means two things: first you need to have a lot of
rich organic matter like manure
compost, worm castings and
this will help boost the level of nitrogen naturally
in the soil and the next thing that you should know is that
the plant needs a high Nitrogen fertilizer all thru the growing season
now some of you have asked me what does a high nitrogen fertilizer mean
well you can check out the video description for some links to
some commonly available fertilizers that
are high in nitrogen and these are some of those examples
so the first option is to use something like blood meal
which is very high in nitrogen and the other option is to use
fish emulsion which is also very high in nitrogen
now if you do not like using animal products
you can use an all-purpose fertilizer
specifically designed for vegetables and other crops
and this is not only high in nitrogen it also supplies the other
ingredients like phosphorous and potassium
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So most corn plants are wind pollinated
and sometimes it might be tempting to look at the corn growing so big
and then go ahead and harvest the cobs
out of the corn plant however note
that after the corn has formed it does take some time for all the
corn kernels inside or the corn seeds inside to form
before they're ready to harvest now the corn plant has these male flowers that
you can see on the top
and then the female flowers or the female part of the corn plant are
just above the corn the silks
right here so what do you need to do is just gently feel the silk
part of the corn and once
this turns a little dark and dry
that's really the time and you can start harvesting your corn
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so here you can see that the corn
silk is pretty dry and
and by feeling around the corn I was able
to conclude that this corn was ready for harvest
So let's open up this corn and see how
well this corn plant has formed the kernels inside
so you can see that the kernels are very well formed
you might have some spaces where
the corn kernels are missing but as long as you have most of the kernels in tact
you can conclude that you've had a good harvest so as you can see here this is a
very
good looking corn and once you harvest such corn
you'll be happy that your hard work has paid off
and you can harvest lot of corn from
just a few corn plant SO in this whiskey barrel container
I'm growing about three or four corn plants
and each of them will send out a lot of shoots
around them producing lot of corn
so the corn plan is always grown as an annual
which means that it will grow for one season and then die
so this is our whiskey barrel container
and you can see how dense the root system is for
this corn plant so about 3-4 corn plants sending out this massive root system
alt throughout the container and this is the reason why I like growing
corn in large containers like whiskey barrels
because they really need all that room in the container
to send out these roots which in turn
will give you very nice corn
so this is how I like to eat my corn
now I'm cooking my corn directly on a
gas cooktop however
if you have a charcoal grill or barbecue grill
you can easily cook corn on charcoal
And it tastes even better so what I do is I just roast the corn
directly
on the stove and it takes about
five minutes or so for the corn to
get cooked this way
and after its roasted
what I do is I just take some salt and some lime
or lemon and then just take a pinch of salt and then
rub over the corn all around it
and this really gives a very nice
punch to the flavor of corn and
and I always like to eat my corn in this way
and if you do not like the lemon and salt you can just eat the roasted corn
and it tastes just as good So which type of corn do you like to crew
do you like to grow corn that is very sweet
Or do you like to grow corn that's not very sweet
do let me know share your opinions and I'll see you again soon
Happy Gardening
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