Making Sweet, Sweet Corn: Hand Pollination

This is the first year I am attempting to grow corn. They say corn is one of the few crops to drastically improve in flavour with genetic modification and strategic cultivation. I had a $20 for $40 Groupon for Broadway Terrace Nursery, so in mid-May we took a house trip to the plant store. We found a few gems that day, not the least exciting of which were the peaches and cream corn seedlings. There were twelve plants in all, which is considerably fewer than they say you need, but I of course didn't know that at the time. So we went ahead and planted our corn in a three sisters planting with french round squash and congo watermelons and blackeye peas.

*Quick tangent about the three sisters planting: you probably want to use a vine squash instead of a bush variety. The point of interplanting the squash is to have to creep around the base of the corn and protect it from critters and rodents. That doesn't really happen with bush varieties, like the french round squash we used, as all of the squash grow along a central stalk. Once ours grew to be about 5ft in diameter, it promptly tipped over from the weight and grew into the corn. A you can see below, the plant is now stunting the growth of the very corn plants it was meant to help (right) by stealing all the sunlight and forcing the corn to grow at odd angles. The ones planted with the watermelons (left) are much happier.

Once I looked into growing corn and found information on how many rows were suggested for good pollination, I decided I should probably get some more corn in the ground and quick. I had some yellow sweet corn seeds from my purchase from Victory Seed Co., so I sowed another dozen seeds the following week. At this point the yellow corn, which gets less sun then the others, is about knee high. The peaches and cream corn on the other hand is 6ft tall and starting to do corn things.

Tassels have been forming for a couple of weeks, and now silks have started to emerge as well. Since it's become clear that the corn from seed won't be catching up (and even if it did, I've now realized I would be cross pollinating the cultivars - corn can both self and cross pollinate), I decided to look into hand pollinating the corn.

Turns out the process is simple enough. The pollen develops on the tassels at the top of the plant. Usually, it is blown through fields and onto the silks that develop on the ears-to-be along the stalks of the plants. Alas, I don't have enough corn to be able to rely on the accuracy of the wind. So to hand pollinate the corn, you gently bend the tassels into a paper bag and give the stalk a good shake. Once you've collected enough pollen, sprinkle it on all of the silks, being careful to get as many silks as possible. Each silk is connected an individual kernel that needs to be pollinated to form correctly. If you've ever had corn on the cob and noticed a shriveled kernel or two, this is due to poor pollination.

Corn tassel and anters (flowers)

Silk protruding from the husk

Today I completed my first pollination attempt. I plan on repeating the process every couple of days in the hopes of increasing the chances of successful plant sexy times.