The Silver Queen corn I planted has been slow going. It doesn't get enough sun**, I planted too soon, etc. They do not grow fast because if the shady yard. Water and drainage are not an issues. The issue: tassels seem to be coming out on my earliest plantings. However, the plants are well under one meter tall. Barely over 2 feet or so. What is the prognosis here? Is the plant doomed? **I have very limited space to plant vegetables. I had to find little spots that get 3-6 hours of sun and hope for the best.
That doesn't look like corn . It looks like what comes out the top of the stalk. When I planted corn, the ears came out between the stalk and the long leaves. Someone give advice, quickly!
Those are the tassels, GP. The male flowers. Those corn plants do look young to be tasseling like that. Are your plants stressed?
Not sure how they'd be stressed. I fear over-watering and over-fertilizing would be my worry. I went a bit nuts nursing these things. Again, they do not get a tremendous amount of sun. They're not "young". I planted these in seed trays in early May and grew them indoors till it got warm out. Then we had a few sub-50 degree F nights along the way. Its no big deal, either way. This is a "learning" year. I wasn't optimistic I would get enough sun per day to grow the corn, but I didn't expect this. Then again, I wasn't sure what to expect ;-) I am just hoping this is the result of too early a planting, too many cold nights and not enough sun. Meaning: my later corn plantings might still have a shot.
Sean, I like your thinking. So the plants are plenty old enough to tassel; the issue is they are short. I don't have a lot of experience growing corn. I'm sure there are other gardeners on this site who do. Fingers crossed for your later plantings. BTW, (I'm sure you thought of this, but I can't help myself), you have checked your seed packet for the height of the plants?
From what I see it looks like a fertilizer issue and a pollination problem ! What have you fertilized with ?
I've used blood meal and bone meal to fertilize. I have problems with critters nibbling on shoots and young plants. So I opted for bone and blood meal would fertilize and hopefully scare off the rabbits and squirrels.
Does corn usually tassel at this size? I have only one experience with growing corn/ I'm not an expert.
Sorry for the belated reply. Thanks for all of your help and feedback! I had a few separate patches and rows from 4-20 corn plants scattered throughout the yard. The intent was to manually pollinate from one plant to the next. However, I am just getting thes tasseling runts at 2-4 feet tall in all but one spot that I had planted. The plan now is to dispose of those runts, and instead transplant a few tomato plants in some of those spots. I am fairly sure there is enough sun for tomatoes, if not corn. Its a larnin' year
One of my mutant runts suddenly burst out some silks today. Should I give the silks another day before I pull my bag off my biggest tassle and manually pollinate? Do silks keep getting bigger day by day? Or is a silk as big as it will ever get once it "flowers"? Thanks again! EDIT- Holy moley, I am embarassed thatI made as many typos as I had originally posted...
