Looks to be mostly poor pollination. Did you just not have very many stalks planted in close proximity to each other? Corn needs a fairly high planting density and a fairly large number of stalks to really make nice ears, you can't just get away with only two or three plants.

This year I did 6 stalks in a 2x3 pattern at about a foot and a half apart, and it wasn't enough. I plan planting twice that next year in the same space, and then doubling the amount of space for 4x as many plants.

Can also shake the plants once the silks start showing to help in pollination.. I too did just 6 plants, and some of them turned out pretty good, the others looked more like what you have. There's still one stalk that's lagging behind and isn't quite ready to be picked yet. I made sure to shake my plants every couple of days because I'd already read all about pollination issues.

It helps to plant them in a bunch not a row, if they are in a row the pollen wont make it to the silk.

Interesting fact...each kernal of corn is connected to one silk (the white strands coming out of the ears). Pollen has to reach every single silk in order for the kernal to swell. So it appears only a few of your silks recieved pollen.

It helps to plant them in a bunch not a row, if they are in a row the pollen wont make it to the silk.

Interesting fact...each kernal of corn is connected to one silk (the white strands coming out of the ears). Pollen has to reach every single silk in order for the kernal to swell. So it appears only a few of your silks recieved pollen.

Corn Pollination

We're dealing with sweet corn, my favorite vegetable to grow and eat fresh.

First off, sweet corn is bred for flavor, while field corn is bred for it's hearty traits. So sweet corn is slower to germinate in colder soils, slower to grow without supplemental Nitrogen, and much more susceptible to stress and weather damage.

My first sweet corn this year was on March 25th, I took a chance with the super warm march we had. I planted 3 short rows 15 feet long about 30 inches apart, and my pollination was ok. I had about 20 plants or so there. The exceptionally warm march turned into a cold and moderate April, with two frosts once my corn emerged.

A couple of the plants in my 3 rows frosted off, but they came back up, as the growing point was still below the soil. I wound up with 5 or 6 good ears out of that whole stand, the rest didn't pollinate at all. It was a good experiment to see how well frost damage corn would do, and come back after. I could have covered it, but I had many more rows to plant and I was curious to see first hand what would happen. Reading about it is never quite as good as real experience.

As the tassels emerge and shed their pollen, some of the pollen drifts down onto the silks, pollinating the ear. Once the tassel sheds the pollen, it is only viable for 1-2 hours. The tassel takes a few days to shed all of the pollen, So you do have a window of a couple of days.

Now, Taking the above into account, You want all the plants to pollinate together, so that you have the most pollen shed at the same time, and all of the silks will get pollen on them.

The first thing you can do to maximize this is to have all of the corn plants grow together, i.e, be the same height and stage of development, throughout the first 60 days of growth.

Watch your weather reports, and wait to plant until conditions will be warmer for a good 2 weeks. Corn takes, on average, 10-15 days to emerge from planting. Be a little picky with your row furrow, make sure the planting depth is uniform and the same texture. If you want the BEST stand, cover each row with clear plastic, help the soil warm even more, and help prevent temperature loss overnight. That is the ideal situation. Just be sure to remove the plastic after emergence, or they will cook under the plastic.

After the corn has emerged, the single most important thing you can do to help stand uniformity is to apply Nitrogen early, and spread the fertilizing of Nitrogen across 3 or 4 different applications. Two weeks after it has emerged, dabble it with Nitrogen (I go down to the elevator that my grandfather hauls his grain to, and I buy some Aqueous Ammonia, or 35% N), you can go to any farm and home (Big R, farm supply store) and look for pasture/lawn fertilizer, it comes in 25-0-0 in a 3 gallon jug. If you compost or add amendments in the fall you shouldn't need to add any phosphorous or potassium, but fall applications of Nitrogen will be gone by the time spring rolls around. Fall soil tests will let you know where you stand on you P and K numbers, as well as pH, all important to vegetable plant growth. Excess P and K will stick around until plants use it up, Nitrogen is specifically targeted by nitrobacter which will eat the nitrogen and volatilize it, letting it escape into the atmosphere. The nitrobacter are important in turning nitrogen in our fertilizer into a form that plants can readily use, but there is a small window, once the soils are warmer than 50 degrees, the bacteria do their job all too well.

Remember, we are dealing with a plant that has been selectively bred by humans since the time of Christ, turning it from Mexican maize into the single ear plant we see now. It needs a lot of nitrogen to deliver the high powered performance that humans demand out of it.

Pollination can be maximized by picking the right planting date, having a uniform seed bed, watering well after planting, and applying supplemental N to the plants after 2 weeks, and giving it 2 or 3 more applications of N in 2 week intervals after that. Nitrogen will volatilize on the surface, so the best way to fertilize is to dig a small trench right next to your row, shallow enough not to disturb the roots, dribble in a thin line of 25-0-0, and then cover it up so that it will bond with the soil.

If the stand is staggered, with some plants taller than others and different plants at different stages of growth at the same time, you will see staggered tassel and silk emergence down the road when it comes time to pollinate and fill the ears.

And if, in the end, we have a year like this, where you have such an extreme drought, so little water on the plants, you may wind up with nothing. Sweet corn lacks the drought tolerance that has been bred into the field corn varieties, and this year I had to do this every 5 days or so, hauling water from town:

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~Chris