A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 nuther corn ?

my corn cobbs are pretty big and one of my garden pests (a neighbor actually) came over and said Hmm.... this corn looks ready and plucks it off and peels it open! there were just a few plump kernels towards the bottom. what caused that? there were no bugs i've been picking the rootworm bettles off and i think they just ended up going away. everything else is healthy. pollination? i didn't do anything by hand. there were always lots of bees buzzing around the tassles. is it just too early? how can i tell if it's ready without opening one up? some of the silks have started to brown already. this is my first time trying corn. oh- yea- it's sweet corn.

oh- and they are pretty close together that's also why i just left the pollination to nature. i have 3 rows of corn with 6 stalks in each row. each stalk is about a foot away from another. any ideas?

Sounds like poor pollination, could have been a un-timely rain, or, overhead watering,i.e.,sprinklers? Once your corn starts sheding pollen, never water from the top, drench the roots only. You did the right thing doing three rows of six; however, that still leaves alot of room for miss-placed pollen. The middle row should be better, Probably your whole crop will not be this way, and you can get your belly full 'o' corn!
P.s. Bee's pay little to no attention to corn of any type

Phil is right on. Being an old farm boy, I know a bit about corn growing and perfect weather during pollination adds greatly to yields. A poor "stand" (plants too few and far between) also greatly impact production. We had a very heavy rain right at peak pollination time this year and some of my ears had "blank spots", an area where no kernels were produced. This is caused by poor pollination. (It also can be caused by over zealous gardeners opening up the tip of the ear to check to see if the corn is getting ripe. ) Ears which show good kernel development at the base but have a tip which is blank or is not filled out have suffered from lack of moisture/excessive heat when the ear is filling.
By the way, unless you are doing it for fun, it is a waste of time to grow sweetcorn in a small garden. The very nature of the crop requires a larger area. Four 25' rows of corn about 24-36" apart with plants about 6-8" apart is a good place to start. Go bigger from there. If you ever look closely at huge fields of sweetcorn or regular fieldcorn, you will notice that the outside rows and end rows are seldom as productive as inside rows. Moisture and poorer pollination are some reasons are well as soil compaction.

by saying that bees don't pay attention to corn did you just mean they don't fly down to the silks and pollinate them? cause i know i saw tons of bees flying up top by the tassles. or were they some other sort of bee looking bugs? and about the sweet corn- i just bought the seeds from wal-mart- i just assumed since it said "sweet" it just meant that it'll taste sweeter than regular. what are the big differences? why do you have to have more? like i said- i've never attempted corn before so excuse my ignorance.