Corn is one of the oldest crops we've
grown as humans and it's actually a pretty easy crop to grow. So we're going to
do it, start to finish, in this video. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help
you grow a greener thumb. This little matrix back here is my
little approximation of those huge corn fields that you see out in the Midwest. We're doing it in a small inground
bed here, going from start to finish, like I said. All the way from starting
these seeds, which you'll see, to the actual kitchen and
resulting harvest of this corn. So there's a lot of things you have to
keep in mind. It's a pretty easy crop. Corn is a grass, actually,
it's easy to grow, but there are some pollination things
you have to keep in mind as well as some other tips I think will really
help you in your corn harvest. So cultivate that Like button for
perfect pollination and fatty ears, and let's get into the video. The first thing we have to talk about
are the types of corn that you have the option to grow. I'm going to recommend
one that I think you should grow, but you've got things like
flint corn, dent corn, popcorn, ornamental-style corns, and
you could grow all those. You're probably just not going
to get the result that you want. The result you probably want in your
garden is going to come from sweet corn. That's the one that you can
grab a husk off, shuck it, and you can actually just enjoy it
fresh, straight out of the garden. And it's one of the best things, it's the most satisfying thing
in the garden you can do. Now things like dent corn,
those are actually grown. That's the most popular corn in America. It's grown at huge scale in massive
monocultures to produce corn syrup. You know, tortilla chips,
cornmeal, those types of products. But if you actually eat it,
you're gonna have a bad time. It's not good for eating.
Popcorn, you certainly could grow, but you'd want to let it dry on the stalk. And then you'd get the kernels
out when they're nice and hard, and then you'd pop them. So as it's
named, you could grow it for popcorn, but most of us are probably
going to focus on sweet corn. The next thing to know about planting
and making sure you don't cross-pollinate your corn, a couple of
different strategies. So what's interesting -
let's take just peppers. I've got peppers hiding
behind here over there. Now, they're all planted right next to
one another. So you might say well, they're going to cross-pollinate,
and you're actually right. They will cross-pollinate. But the thing that's going to
be a hybrid is the actual seed. The pepper fruits themselves are going
to remain true to type to whatever I planted. So if I put a shishito in the ground
and a jalapeno and somehow they crossed, the seeds would be a hybrid. I'm still getting shishito and jalapeno
this season. So if I'm not saving seeds, I don't really care, right? With
corn it's actually quite different. Because what you're eating is the
actual kernel, the seed itself, when you actually cross-pollinate
corn it will show up in that year's crop. And so you want to avoid that if you
are growing a couple different varieties and you don't want them to mix.
So a couple of things you can do. The first is the easiest and
that's to plant in isolated blocks. So this herb bed I'm sitting in,
this could be a block of corn. I could have a bunch coming up and maybe
I'd plant another one in my front yard. In fact, that's what I did. I
have one in my front and my back. They're isolated. They're
different varieties. They're not going to cross-pollinate. Another thing you could do is you could
dodge the pollen window of the first crop by about two weeks or so. So let's say you have your silks
and your tassels on the corn, which you'll learn about in
just a second, I promise. When that's happening on one corn, as long as you planted the other corn
a couple weeks behind that point, when its silks and tassels have formed, they're not going to cross-pollinate
because there's no actual reproductive organs to be able to do
it on the other corn. So that's one thing that you can do. And then the final thing that you
can do is just stagger plant in a way that plays with the days to maturity. Kind of like if you were
growing tomatoes or potatoes. You'd have an early season
potato, a mid and a late. You could plant them all at the same
time, they just mature at different rates. Corn, same thing. Pick a couple
varieties that mature in 70 days, a couple that mature in 90 days.
You're missing that by 20 days, you're good to go. Finally it is time to
actually sow our corn seeds. A lot of us know what corn seeds look
like, unlike many plants in the garden, because it's actually the part of the
plant that we're primarily eating. So take a look at these ones right here. I believe these are called American
dream. This is a sweet corn. It's an All America Selections winner, which means that some fancy people decided
that it was one of the best corn in the world, for one of these
years, I believe this was 2019. So you can 100%, I actually recommend starting corn in
the ground that you're going to plant it in. But just for an example, I will
show you that you can transplant corn. So this is my Epic 6 Cell seed starting
tray, my favorite tray of all time, that's why I sell it on the
store. But you can use anything. You could use a Tupperware,
you could use a plastic bag, it doesn't really matter as
long as it holds some soil. So take a scoop of some seed
starting mix and with corn, because it is a hard husk
sort of, you know, rough seed, a lot of people will want to soak
it. You don't really have to do that, honestly. As long as you bury it about a half an
inch deep in one of these trays or in the ground, you're in a very good spot. So what I do typically is I just
stick my finger, I poke it slightly, or at least I'll half fill the tray. So
sometimes I'll take the tray like this, I'll fill it halfway and then
just drop the seeds in like this. And I only plant one, maybe two per hole. Two will guarantee
germination. So if you see two, then you just snip the one that
looks a little bit less vigorous. But corn is a really easy starter
guys. Half inch, maybe an inch down, not too much more than that. And we'll have to now talk about what to
do when these actually grow up and it's time to transplant them. We're back out here in the plot with the
corn that you saw at the beginning of the video. What we're talking about
now is the spacing and the
planting strategy for corn. It is a wind pollinated plant. The way that the corn works is you're
going to have the corn stock go up. It's going to produce these
things called tassels. It's the male part of the
plant that contains the pollen. And then below you have the
little ears and the silks. The silks need to catch the
grains of pollen from the tassels. And that's really only happening with
some environmental stress, right? So most of the time it's going to be wind. The reason why you plant it in blocks
is so that that pollen gets a better chance of hitting the silks. Cause
the way it actually works botanically, is a grain of pollen has to go into
an individual thread of the silk, has to travel all the way down into
the ear and that's one kernel of corn. So that's why a corn may
not be perfectly aesthetic. It might not have all the grains in there
because it was improperly pollinated. So you have to plant it in a
block like this. You'll see, we kind of have two blocks here. It's just we don't have enough corn
right here so we're going to put another crop down the middle. But nevertheless,
this is a pretty good spacing here. About 10 inches apart on
center. I got 15 here, 16 here. It's looking really good. All we need
to do now is get them in the ground. So I'm here with my garden manager,
Jacques. He's going to tackle this side. I'm going to tackle this side. We've got some amendments here for
planting and we really just want to talk about some of the soil prep.
So we grew some potatoes here. Many of you have probably seen that
video. If you haven't, go check it out. But our potatoes, really didn't amend
the soil too much. It's a pioneer crop. You don't really need to. Our soil actually here in our
area of San Diego is pretty good. So I did amend the soil
AFTER the potatoes. What we did is we added a lot of
municipal compost, mixed it in, actually did till a little
bit just to get it in there. Cause the potatoes were dug in trenches. So we had to break that hard clay
up a little bit. But besides that, not too much. I guess we
worked in some of the straw. That's been an interesting. Thing we did is we put
a lot of the straw in. Put a lot of the straw in, that
was used to mulch the potatoes. But after this with corn, I mean the
transplanting process is really easy. I'll give you the blood meal Jacques,
and I'll take the cottonseed meal. It's a grass. It's a heavy nitrogen crop,
especially at the start of its life. Blood meal is at 12-0-0. Cottonseed meal,
if you prefer vegan options, is 6-2-1. These are both from Espoma
Organic, the sponsor of the video. But it's up to you which one you
use or if you use one at all. I personally am going to, even though I did amend this soil because
I just want to make sure that these have enough to really start going
once we put them in the ground. And in organic fertilizers,
not, you can't really overdo it. It's hard to overdo an organic one,
which is why I like to go that route. So in we go. Actually I just forgot to
put it in so I'll put some of this in. But I'll do one example over
here. So just a little sprinkling. I don't get very precise or very precious
about the exact amount that I add in, but I do add it in. And then you just
go ahead and form it up around it and your corn is in the ground. I'm
putting in some cottonseed meal, he's got blood meal over there. Actually it might be an interesting test
because they're both relatively high nitrogen. This is a 6-2-1,
blood meal is a 12-0-0. They're both from Espoma Organic.
We'll see which one does better, but regardless the whole point was to
put in something with a good amount of nitrogen for the young corn,
which is going to need it. Yeah, it's really important at the beginning
to make sure corn has enough fertilizer. Yeah. It's a grass. Remember, it's a grass.
So what does a grass grow a lot of? Leaves. What do leaves
use a lot of? Nitrogen. So it's pretty simple when
you think about it that way, but you do have to remember to do it. All right, the corn is
in, both sides. I want to. Give it a really nice and healthy water. You really want to make sure that
you saturate the soil. For us, mixing in this compost and
mixing in some amendments, sometimes makes it a little
hard to rehydrate the soil. So I have to spend a little extra time
just making sure I get it soaked in. The other thing you might be wondering
is why isn't there mulch on this corn yet? Well, I have a big problem that I've never
had before my old garden with earwigs or pincher bugs. They're everywhere in the backyard here
and they love to hang out in this straw and they particularly like to eat corn. It's one of their favorite plants to eat. And so what I'm going to do is let
this establish, get a little bit older, a little bit stronger and more resilient
before I mulch it and invite those earwigs in. And I might even
lay down some organic controls, which we'll talk about, like one of these oil traps that
I've done a video on before. That's what I'm going to do. You're
probably going to want to mulch the corn, it's somewhat shallow-rooted.
It's not going to want to dry out. So the mulch is important, but I'm just waiting because I
know I have a particular pest. But we'll see you back once
we have something to say. Back over here growing our corn, it's been about two to three weeks or so
and the corn really has started to take off. You can see nice dark green growth,
not a whole lot of issues to speak of, a couple changes that we've
made here. Number one, most obviously is the straw mulch
that I've laid over the top. I took a bit of a breather on the straw
mulch because we have an earwig problem across the whole Homestead. It seems like San Diego in general has
an earwig problem since straw is like the perfect environment for those earwigs
to thrive. So when the corn was young, I kept the mulch off and just
made sure I watered the bed. Now I think it can stave off at least
some of that damage. Haven't seen any, fingers crossed, yet. So I put about
two inches of straw mulch on this. This is the GardenStraw, the shredded straw mulch that
I offer for sale on the store. Best straw mulch I've personally ever
used in my life, extremely high quality. But just any sort of mulch on top is
going to be great because corn wants to remain adequately moist
throughout the growing season, especially in this phase when it's
putting on a lot of new growth. So the only other real thing that we've
done in this patch since the last time we talked was just a water here and
there. Usually a nice deep soak, and then sometimes a fertigation.
So watering with fertilized water, just using organic liquid fertilizer
that just drinks it right up. In this early stage, higher on nitrogen.
But man, the corn looks really great. Not too much to say until the
next phase of growth. I lied, one thing I'm going to do really
quickly is just interplant some squash. We have this little row down
here, nice little pathway, but would rather make it into something
a little bit more productive and actually protective. So what's nice about the squash is it's
going to spread out across the entirety of this bed, almost as
an edible ground cover. So that's exactly what I want to do.
I'm going to put it in right here. I'll put one in up there and they'll
sort of snake its way through and provide an extra layer of living
mulch in this bed. We're back here in the corn
patch, it is June 22nd, 2021. I was going for about four
or five days doing a garden, install and a couple of workshops.
And by the time I came back, no joke, at least a couple of these tassels are
taller than me, which is fantastic. When I left it was probably about here
or so. So the growth, needless to say, has been pretty insane. But what I want
to do now, we're not ready to harvest, but we do have silk development, early ear development and a couple of
weird mutations or things to watch out for that I want to show you. Up first, you
can see these silks have been coming out. We can see a corn ear right here. If I give it a little squeeze I know
for a fact it's not fully developed yet. And another way you know is because these
silks really haven't started to brown and really dry and die up. They're probably close to past the point
of being able to accept pollen, especially these ones down here. But these ones still look quite young
and I think we're still getting some pollination on this cob here. Another weird thing to note is that
one corn plant can create multiple offshoots. And so as you can see, we do
have some silk formation right there, right there. But on this offshoot right
here, for example, we have another one. And so you can get secondary
tasseling on these side shoots. Something that's very odd that can happen
on the side shoots is this right here. So I pulled it off earlier, but you can
even see a weird little mutation up top. I had some silks forming at
the top of this right here, which is the top of the
tassel. Sort of a weird thing. Apparently it happens on the side shoots. I wouldn't stress out about it too much. It seems to happen to a
lot of different people. What's interesting about this particular
variety of corn is that this is the same variety, but you can see this
is an almost perfectly white tassel. This one is sort of a
darker reddish color. Your general rule of thumb
on harvesting your corn, besides the silk tip that I just gave
you, is three weeks from tassel formation. But it depends, right? Like
everything in gardening. I started these earlier than the
typical time you would start corn. So that's going to slow them
down, slightly. Your variety, the way you've cared for it. So for me, based on what I saw on
the ears and the silks, I'm probably looking at another two
weeks and it's been about two since I've seen the tassel. So I'll check in with you in a couple
of weeks and we'll get a fresh ear of corn. I almost forgot to take you out here in
the front yard to check out the dwarf corn and its progress. The smallest
little corn I've ever seen. These tassels are maybe two
feet from the soil surface. I don't know if it's supposed to be
that level of dwarf, but nevertheless, still getting corn formation, some ears
down here. They at least feel full. Hopefully they actually are
full. I'm not quite sure, I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe
the pollination wasn't quite up to par on these ones. But nevertheless, we're still
going to wait for the ears to fill up. Out here in the front yard,
this tiny little dwarf corn. I'm not super optimistic about it, but I figured I would show
you what it looks like. So let's do a little harvest here too. This one looks pretty good.
Silks just came right off, tiny. Let's see what we get
out of this little guy. Oh. That's actually not bad! A little
cornworm in there, but that's fine. Okay, the pollination's a little off.
Actually no, it's an earwig. I swear I had a huge problem
with earwigs this year, guys. I have a couple solutions.
I'll maybe do a video about it, but that's kind of frustrating. Take
a look, a little earwig in there, but the color of the kernels are actually
very, very interesting and impressive. So maybe a couple other
of these will be good. I actually did get a slightly better one. There was still a cornworm
at the top there. But. Other than that, that actually looks
pretty solid. Well, the moment. Is finally here. I'm super excited because almost all
of this corn is ready to harvest and eat. And I'm going to eat
it, I'll call it 90's style, it's how I grew up eating it. But let's take a look close up so you
know how and when to harvest your corn. There are a few different ways to do
this, but I like to look at the silks. Remember this is the
female part of the plant. When they're starting to brown
like this, it's a good indicator. And what I like to do is then kind
of squeeze the cob and see if I feel full formation. Another thing people will do is
they'll give the silks a little tug, almost like they're pulling someone's
hair. And if they come off easy, that's how you know it's time. A
final method that some people will do, and I'll show it to you right now, is to get a little curious and
actually just peel away at the exterior and take a look at that kernel formation. And then what you'll do is you just poke
one of the kernels and if it's easy to poke and a little white fluid comes
out, kind of like that right there, you're good to harvest. So
it's been a long time coming. The light is shining through the
cornfield, the corn patch here. So let's take this guy and you just
want to pull it right off the stalk. So you can take it and
just crack it right off. Give it a little twist at the bottom. And here we go. Now I
could just eat this as is, put it in the microwave or steam it. But I do want to show you the actual corn. Let's take a look at it and see what we
got going on. I'm already seeing some, oooh yes! That's what I'm talking about. This is why you grow your
own, guys. Look at this. You're not getting this at the
supermarket. And this is a sweet corn. I can eat this just as is.
Hold on, let's get this out. Oh, what? Whoa. Okay. We got triplets. It looks like this one tried to
develop some secondary ears right. Here. That's really
weird. Comment down below. I haven't seen this before yet with
corn. I'm sure I'm just a novice, but take a look at that. Well, this is a surprise. It's
like I have a little corn sword. I was running around harvesting
some tomatoes with it, like slicing it off the vine. But I
think I need to actually eat this thing. I looked it up. It seems like what's going on is called
MESS - multiple ears, same shank. Kind of a funky little acronym
there. But nevertheless, still a perfectly fine
piece of corn. Right here, you can see at the top there's a little
bit of an improper pollination or it probably dried out a little bit, but
the rest of this is absolutely gorgeous. So one thing I think you guys should
probably know is that if you're growing sweet corn and you harvest it
out of the field right there, you can just eat it like that. You don't
have to cook it, although I will be, but that's delicious. Nice and sweet. I think maybe if you
have some problems with your stomach, it might not be the best idea, but
I've eaten like six of these already. And they're really tasty. I
don't even bring them inside, but I will bring it inside right now
cause I got to do the 90's preparation, the 1990's cooking preparation
for an ear of corn. Okay, I lied, I'm keeping it out here because it's
so nice out. We're going 90's mode, and this is what my mom did at least
and I think a lot of people probably did this when they were a kid.
Just wet a paper towel, roll it up, twist the ends off, little miniature steamer here. I'm going to toss it in the microwave
for like five minutes or so. I know it's not the fanciest
way to cook corn. I know that, but I'm doing a little throwback
guys. You've got to cut me some slack. I'm going to try these
little baby corn too. We'll see if they end up tasting like
baby corn or if they just taste kind of weird and gross. But either way
these are going in for about, well probably less time, maybe
two minutes or so on these ones. But here we go. Let's toss
it in. And there we have it. The two little pathetic
corn are right there, but let's unwrap this and see if the
color changed at all before we get down to eating it. Oh yes, it did. Look at that! Almost looks like glass
gem style corn now. Okay. We're giving it that classic 90's
prep. You butter the whole thing up. In a perfect world I would be like
twirling it perfectly with those little corncob things, but we'll do it,
do it a little natural this way. I'm going to butter up the baby corns.
This is just how you did it back then. I don't know. This is how I grew up. Maybe it's why I like bad food today
because I can't imagine this is an extremely healthy way to consume corn. I'm hitting it with a little
bit of that garlic salt. This is a homegrown garlic
salt from a friend of mine. So we're going to go garlic salt and
we're going to hit it with some smoked paprika straight out of Spain. So
this is when I was in Barcelona. So I've thoroughly seasoned this,
let's taste it. Well here we have it. We should probably try the baby
corn first and see what happens. So I'm going to hit it with a
little more of that garlic salt. See how these taste. Hmm, no, that's not, that's not happening. What's going on there is basically it's
a completely unformed baby corn in the sense that it didn't even get fertilized. The silks didn't even carry pollen down. So the actual kernels
are just sort of limp. And then there's a very tough
interior core. Not great eating, but what is probably great
eating is this guy right here. So let's give this a taste. Oh, that's
hot. That's actually really hot. You know what? We might need a little,
little, little salt bay on this. Ooh, yeah. Okay. Here
we go. Let's try this. That's what I'm talking about. It's just so good. It's
just so good this way. Hmm. Okay. A+. There's probably a million ways
to cook corn that taste even better. But this is the one I grew up with. Guys, if you have any questions growing corn,
this was a full seed to harvest guide. But there are some things that we didn't
cover like pests and diseases to deal with. Maybe I'll do a different
video on that in the future. But I just want to encourage you to grow
stuff from seed so you can have these types of moments. Chilling
out here in the backyard, eating my beautiful looking piece of corn. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
