- I love growing corn, but I've made a ton of
mistakes growing corn, even this year. So in this video, I'm gonna go over all
the different mistakes you might be making growing your corn so you can have an incredible harvest. So here we are in my
backyard mini-corn patch. This is the third one
I've grown this year. I have a huge patch of corn I'm gonna show you in just a second. But at the end of the video,
I'm gonna open up an ear and we'll see if I have good pollination and a good ear of corn. But right now, cultivate that
like button for epic ears And let's crack into the mistakes. The first mistake, and the most critical, is just not planting enough corn. When I get messages from you guys saying, "what's wrong with my corn," it's usually just because you only have a couple stalks of corn. It needs a lot. I would say a block of at
least four feet by four feet because it's a wind-pollinated plant. This is the male part,
the tassel right here. It literally drops pollen down. You see it blowing in the wind right now. If you don't have enough, the pollen's just gonna kind of blow away. It has to land on the silks,
which is the female part, and actually traverse down
those silks into the ear to pollinate each individual kernel. So the problem you're gonna run into is by not planting enough, the pollen just simply won't hit the silks and you will not get enough corn. Mistake number two is spotty germination. Corn is a big seed, but
it's a very hard seed, and so when you direct
sew it in the ground, much like we did here in
this attempted corn maze, you can see the outer row
just really didn't terminate. And the reason why is because
after its sprouted up, our irrigation system just
didn't get enough water out to this corner here, or really any of the corners
around the whole maze. I do have a little maze here,
so it's still kind of cool. But what you need to think
about with corn is making sure that the moisture level is consistent the entire time you're germinating it. You can start corn indoors
or in trays and transplant. The only thing I would say is it tends to take a
little bit to settle in. So when you're germinating corn, make sure you lay down maybe some mulch to lock in that moisture or make sure that you're
irrigating the entire patch. Mistake number three is
improper soil preparation. So here in the corn patch on
the Epic Homesteading channel, you can see exactly what
we did if you want to, but we basically leveled the ground out and tilled in a very
healthy amount of compost. Now, I know we often don't till
here in the gardening world. I simply did not have enough
nutrition in this soil, specifically nitrogen, to make sure that the corn was growing nice and tall. Corn loves nitrogen. So you need to loosen the soil up and you need to add in a healthy
amount of organic matter. So if you're in a situation
where that's not the case, maybe it would've germinated, maybe it would've even grown a little bit, but without proper nutrition and with way too compacted soil, it would've stood at no chance. The fourth mistake you
can run into with corn is just improper fertilization. So corn, it's actually a grass. It's not a grain, contrary
to what you might think. We've evolved it over
time through selection and it's just a really
crazy specific grass. So, what does grass need? It's a leafy plant, it needs nitrogen. So if you have too little
nitrogen in your soil, that's probably gonna be
the number one deficiency that your corn will have. So, how do you fix that? Well, a great way to do
that is to use any sort of organic granular fertilizer. I personally think that chicken manure, especially from your own
chickens, if you can do it, is a great way to do it because chicken manure is
extremely high in nitrogen and that nitrogen is very active. But if you're seeing stunted growth, light, yellowing leaves,
nitrogen is probably the problem. Mistake number five, watering. You can really mess your corn
up with improper watering. It's a plant that wants to remain more or less constantly moist in the soil. Remember, it's growing really tall, has a lot of structure to build, and so one of the best ways to do that is to put it on some kind of irrigation or just make sure you
don't forget to water. It needs at least an inch
or two every single week and the best way to make
sure you keep it there is some kind of mulch. Whatever's local to you is great. We're huge fans of straw
here at Epic Gardening, but you can use fallen leaves if you're in a more cold climate that actually has leaves that fall. We don't have that here,
so I'm a little jealous. But some sort of mulch,
three, even four inches, is great to lock that moisture in. Mistake number six is your corn
just kind of flopping over. You can see this one just, it's falling. Well, part of the reason why is because it's become a little top heavy. These are some big, healthy ears. They need to get harvested. But if you transplant your corn, I sometimes recommend
transplanting a little bit deeper because corn being such a tall plant, having a lot of leaves, catching the wind, and being a wind-pollinated plant, you kind of want it in an
area that gets some airflow, but it can topple over. So if you transplant,
transplant a little bit deeper. And if not, sometimes you can even
just tie your corn together sort of in a big bunch. Take some twine, kind of tie it together, so it all supports itself. Or if you're really getting particular, you can individually stake
with some bamboo stakes. Keep it upright so it
doesn't crack itself in half before it's ready to harvest. Our last set of mistakes really comes at the critical point of the harvest. So I'm gonna harvest one for you right now and talk about how you
really can mess this up. So remember, these are the silks. These are the female part of the plant. They need to look completely dead. So about, I don't know, 18 to
22 days after your silks form is when you should at least be thinking about harvesting the corn. So this one here, to be honest with you, is probably still not quite ready. You want to have these silks so dry that you could almost slap 'em
and they just come right off. You can also give it a bit of a feel and kind of see, hey, how's this feeling? I actually feel there's
a little mistake probably in this corn. So let me open up one that's
perfectly ready right now. Take a look at these silks. What you have is very
dry silks, very brown. If I pull lightly, they come right out. Now, even this might be slightly early, but, hey, I'm gonna
show it to you anyways. A good way to test while
the plant is still intact, while you haven't removed it, you can actually just peel
this down just a little bit, just enough to reveal the tip of the ear. There we go. So I've got pretty good pollination here. You can see there's a
little problem in here that I'll talk about in a second. But what you want to do is you want to kind of just
poke one of these kernels with your fingertip. Come in, ooh, give it a little poke and you wanna see sort of
a milky fluid come out. If you see that, you're in a good spot. If it's kind of gummed
up and a little bit eh, then you're waiting too long. And if you don't see anything at all and it's just really small and unformed, you've waited not long enough,
it's a little bit too early. So let me pull the rest of this off and I'll discuss a couple
more mistakes you might find. So first of all, overall we have a really
nice ear of corn here, but there's this guy. Now, this guy is a corn worm. This little guy is the
bane of growing corn. I wouldn't so much call this a mistake as just a thing that happens. It's a moth that lays
an egg right at the top. Comes in, munches off. We've harvested this early enough that it actually hasn't eaten too much. So you might say, "ew, this is gross. I'm not gonna eat this corn." Don't be like that. Don't be like that. Just cut the tip off. We'll feed these to our
chickens in a second. But this is overall a
really solid ear of corn. Now, let me show you what happens when maybe that corn ear is not so solid. Let's put this down for a second and let's harvest this guy right here. Now, how do I know it's not quite ready? Well, these don't come
off quite as easily. They're not quite there yet. I can't just tug 'em right off. I still see pretty
intact silks right here. And I'm squeezing it and I'm knowing that I haven't really
pollinated this top bit. But a good sign is that the
ear is kind of pushing away from the main stalk, showing that the base is developed enough to kind of force it away. So let's crack it off. We'll twist it and let's
see what we've got in here. So I'm already gonna guess that the tip is not gonna be pollinated. So here's what happens when you don't have perfect pollination. Now, this is still a
pretty good ear of corn. If I pop the kernel, I'm still
in a pretty good spot here but you can see how the silk just didn't all the way pollinate the tip, and I also have one of
those corn worms here. So what do you do in this case? I would say don't beat yourself up. It's really not that big a deal. Again, you can just cut this off and you have a pretty good ear of corn. Oftentimes when the very,
very tip doesn't pollinate, it just means that the weather
might have been too hot, water might have been a little bit low, and it's gonna prioritize
these kernels down here. So let me toss those corn
worms to the chickens and we'll give this a little
bite and see how it tastes. Like I said, don't waste
an entirely good ear just 'cause something
weird was at the top. What I like to do is
just chop that tip off, that'll go to the chickens as well, and I'll give this a
rinse and a quick taste. So this is a sweet corn. Don't do this with a
dent or a flower corn, but you can eat corn
straight off of the stalk. I think it's still a little
bit better, personally, cooked, but it is quite nice this way. Mm, perfectly sweet. You know you hit it right when you get that little
milky residue coming out. It is so delicious and so sweet. Grow your own sweet corn, guys. Hopefully these mistakes help. Subscribe for more tips. Good luck in the garden. Keep on growing. (quiet funk music)
