Topic: Growing sweetcorn in Ontario, Canada

[carlscolin]

Hi everyone
I planted sweetcorn this year, for the first time.  It appeared to be growing well, but sometime in July I noticed that the silks at the top of the cobs had disappeared ?  and  on closer inspection I noticed earwigs and suspect that they have eaten them.  I sprayed them with a soapy solution, which appeared to have cleared them off.  But I wondered if the damage to the silks would hinder the cobs growth ?  Does anyone know ?  I am now looking at the cobs, and they are all about the size of half a cob, and don't appear to have grown any more than when I found the earwigs , so I suspect some damage was done.  Also, does sweetcorn require a lot of watering ? and could that have anything to do with the size of the cobs ?  We have had a lot of rain this summer, so I did not manually water them very often as I thought the rain would be enough.

Thanks

[squeezyjohn]

Every kernel of corn in the cob has it's own strand of silk that pokes out of the end ... and in order for the corn to produce a good fully set cob - every single strand of silk needs to come in to contact with a grain of pollen (produced by the flower at the top of the plants) ... once the pollen has landed on a silk - it quickly starts to ripen the individual kernel it's attached to.  Having fulfilled it's function - the silk then normally dies back and goes dark brown and shrivelled on the outside.

So if the silk was eaten before pollination - you will have very few ripe kernels in your corn.  But if it was after pollination - you're probably OK.

This year was the first year I hand pollinated the silky bits - and I got the best cobs I've ever had.

[Jayb]

Hello and Welcome to the forum  nice of you to join us.

I've had trouble with earwigs amongst the developing silks before, a real pain! I found the damaged silks on many did grow a bit more and were pollinated, some empty kernels but not too bad. You might be lucky if they were pollinated before being eaten as squeezyjohn says. If your plants had silks showing in July, I'd peel back the layers on one to check for development?
If you have had a lot of rain throughout the summer, I doubt they would have needed extra watering, they do like to be well fed though. Although I doubt there is much to be done about the small cob size this late on.

[tricia]

Welcome to A4all carlscolin,

I've had the same problem but am sure that - in my case - earwigs are not to blame as I've never seen them in my garden. I do get mice in my shed and think that they are the likely culprits. This year I got lucky. Most of the cobs had been pollinated by the time the mice felt hungry so I got a good crop of well filled cobs for the freezer.

Every year I say I will cover the cobs at night, but never seem to get round to it - even though I'm only growing a dozen or so plants - 2 dozen or so cobs. I would have had another 6-7 cobs if I hadn't been lazy!

Tricia