How to Successfully Plant Corn

Growing A Healthy Corn Crop

How do you successfully grow corn?  It’s all in the planting.  The Tropical Grower is taking a pause in our Fall/Winter Crop Update to post about planting corn?  What?  

For most of you, this will seem a bit early.  If you’re Growing Tropical, it’s time to get your seeds in the ground.  Don’t wait.  While the rest of the US is still frigid, there is not another below 40 degree night in our forecast, even if there was, better to cover them for a night or two.  You are battling a harvest before the rainy season hits.  While I’m sure there are Tropical Growers out there with mad skills, the majority of us will not have corn make it in the rainy season.

My Nemesis Crop

Corn is complicated, for me.  I tried to grow it for years, poorly.  

Here’s the problem, if there is a zombie apocalypse, I don’t want to live without corn chips.  It’s my comfort food.  Since we got the boys excited about learning how to grow their own food, as a necessary skill-set if there was a zombie apocalypse, they’re boys, I had to grow corn.  These things do actually backfire.  

It took years of crappy crops for me to finally find a planting plan that worked.  Reading the recommendations at face value and knowing how plants work in tropical growing zones has helped tons.  I still get bad crops.  That’s growing.  And if I don’t follow my own planting plan exactly, like this year, my crop is meh.

Sow After Last Frost

In case you are wondering, tropical corn planting is absolutely no different from the standard corn planting directions: Sow after last frost.  Imagine that.  It just comes sooner for Tropical Growers than everyone else.  My current seed pack says: sow when the weather is warm and all danger of frost has passed.  The rest of the instructions are almost exactly the same as well.  

If you’re Growing Tropical, your expectations of huge plants and corn ears should be lowered, however.  While almost every other vegetable plant will grow bigger in tropical growing zones, corn will not in my experience.  They are not tiny, but they rarely reach Iowa corn sizes.  

Our Fall/Winter Planting Season followed Hurricane Ian

We have two corn planting seasons Sept-Dec and Jan-April in Our Garden.  Outside these seasons, things get funky.  This year, the east coast was under a hurricane watch during my planting, sliding-scale, goal date Sept 15.  We were expecting buckets of rain, and I delayed dropping the seeds.

The first seeds went in the ground two days before Hurricane Ian hit us when we were still expecting it to head towards Tampa.  The seeds were planted an inch deep in a raised bed.  They sprouted a couple of days after the storm, no problem.  They were just in the ground late, the next seed batch planted a week later, super late.

All of this probably would have been okay, but we got our first cold snap right around Christmas.  Early, but not completely out of the ordinary.  The first plants already had tassels, the little flower-like things at the top that drop the pollen, but the cold weather forced all the plants to produce tassels before they had silk, the unpollinated corn ears with the distinctive silk fibers sticking out of them.  We got 3 ears, mostly, and 5 corn nubs, half ears, out of the 16 plants grown.  Boo! Hiss. To see more from out Fall/Winter Harvest Check out Fall & Winter Crop Update – Fruits & Herbs blog post.

Spring Plantings

On the flip side, if we don’t plant in January for the spring season and wait until a more normal March or April, the plants will grow about 2 feet before sending out tassels.  One year, I got a single kernel of corn.  If you’ve never seen a single kernel of corn growing on an undeveloped ear, it takes awhile to figure out exactly what you’re looking at.  I let the whole thing dry out before I harvested it just to be sure.

Timing is Everything

When the package says Sow After Last Frost, believe it, no matter where you are growing.  If it’s a Tropical or Subtropical growing zone, let go of your ideas about when spring happens.  It’s going to be after your last cold snap.  When I first started growing corn, the article I was reading suggested waiting until May to plant which was that person’s last cold snap.  HA!  That’s when our Tropical Rainy Season begins.

The other consideration is the type of corn you are growing.  They run from around 55 to 95 days to mature.  The sweet corn seeds we are growing are supposed to take 85 days to mature.  Whether you are growing before cold snaps or rainy seasons, make sure you give your plantings time to mature. 

Full Sun

Wherever you are growing, corn takes full sun.  In tropical zones, this is at least 6 hours of direct light in my experience.  Most places they recommend at least 8 hours.  We do have both a broccoli and beefsteak tomato growing happily right now in 5 hours, but I wouldn’t chance it with corn.  

Preparing the Rows

Because corn uses the wind to pollinate its ears, planting in rows or close groups is best.  It assures the pollen falling off the top of the plant gets its own silks and all the other plants around it.  The more pollen you have around the better.

While I’ve tried them numerous places in Our Garden, I made raised beds this summer specifically for growing corn better, row crops in general.  They always suggest growing at least 3 rows, 8 to 10 feet long.  I usually only have room for 2 rows, and I help with the pollination.

Compost Mounds

When I made the raised beds this summer, I filled them with a mix of garden compost, sand, and Black Cow.  Our Garden is in a tropical growing zone, Zone 10, everything in it requires sand in order to cope with the amount of water we get.  This is our standard mix for all vegetables and most plants.  The Black Cow I added because I like a good rich start.

For the Fall/Winter Crop, I added no supplements as it was a new bed.  For the January plantings, I pulled all the mounds out flat, added a vegetable fertilizer and mixed well.  

Dividing the area into rows spaced about 12 inches apart, this is bit smaller than the standard 18 inches recommended because the plants are not going to grow as big as expected. I divided the rows into mounds 12 inches apart and added a hearty helping of garden compost to the top.

It All About the Poo Balls

Yup, this is the fancy part.  Reaching my hand into the bag of Black Cow, this is a commercial garden compost with cow mature included, I roll a 2 inch ball.  Taking a single corn kernel, pointy end down, I push the seed into the bottom of the ball.  Most growers plant multiple seeds to assure a plant in each mound and pinch back all but the strongest sprout.  If you use or want to use this method, simply put more seeds in the Poo Ball, pointy end down.

Placing the Poo Ball onto the top of the mound, I pressed it down into a 1 inch disk.  You  want an inch to a ½ inch of Black Cow on top of the seed.  Don’t plant it too deep.  I also make the mound, a continuous mound, rounded and all packed together.

Mulch

We use a natural cypress mulch for Our Garden vegetables. I tend to skip the dyes on the vegetables with the exception of red on the tomatoes. It’s just a personal preference. With all the tropical rain, dyes run, and fade in the tropical sun.

Mulch is an extremely important part of growing tropical, or in my experience up north, growing in general.  Mulching around your plants will keep the top soil from drying out.  During the drought season, you can’t get enough around them.  During the wet season, I tend to pull all the mulch back from around the plant stems to allow the soil to dry out, no fungus please.

Corn gets each mound mulched completely, from top to trough.  Leaving only the Poo Disk bare, the entire area looks flat.  

Planting done!

Corn Growing Tips

Sprouts

We usually get sprouts in a couple of days, 2-5 to be exact.  If I don’t have a sprout in the mound within a few days, I sink another seed.  My seed pack says germination, sprouting, between 7 to 10 days.  My experience as a Tropical Grower says if I don’t have sprouts in 7 days, they aren’t coming up.  If you live somewhere else, you should probably wait.  We had 80 degree days right after planting.

Of the 16 seeds I planted January 20th, 14 came up.  The other 2 mounds are each at the ends and may be having some shading issues.  I’ve decided to plant something else in those mounds this season.

Water

Corn likes water, about an inch a week.  Ours get sprinkled daily for 30 minutes.  If your soil is less sandy, it will probably need less water than our plants like here in the tropical zone.  You should probably stick with an inch a week.  Soil that looks dry is a good indicator your corn is not getting enough water.  Stunted plants, wilting dry plants, tassels emerging too soon are also all indicators your plants need water.  I’ve seen all of these. You can probably see my crooked grin from there.

Bare Roots

If at any point during your growing season you start to see the little octopus tentacles sticking out around the stem at the top of your mounds, add some compost to cover them.  

Corn grows shallow roots.  Most plants have a shallow root system in tropical growing zones.  Tropical growers should be used to seeing this weirdness.  Since corn is top heavy, you want to watch for it, maybe add some stakes.  My whole crop went down in a storm one spring. It still produced because it already had almost mature ears, but it wasn’t happy.

Pests

Corn is prone to earworms.  They enter the silks and eat the corn as its growing in the husk.  The leaves can also get munched on by any passing insect.  

Pest control is as individual as each grower, and I recommend using whatever makes you comfortable, but you are probably going to need something.  You can treat your plants with an organic or commercial pesticide, propagate pest eating bugs and/or reptiles, or simply pick them off.  It really is a personal preference.  We tend to treat Our Garden for bugs, not our food.

Fertilization

Once tassels, the little spindly thing that comes out of the top, and silks, immature corn ears with fibrous strands sticking out of them, form, your corn is ready to be fertilized.  Corn is supposed to be self-fertilizing.  It drops the pollen from the tassels onto the silks. It’s called air or wind fertilization.

Every silk fiber needs to be hit with pollen.  Every one that doesn’t, will be a bare spot on the ear of corn, no kernels.  You can up your fertilized yield by planting in rows or clusters where pollen from multiple plants can fall on multiple silks.  Then, there is pulling pollen off the tassels and spreading them all over the silks.  I do this to our corn to aid in the pollination process.  Sometimes it helps.

Harvesting

Usually, corn matures about 3 weeks after the silks form.  Everything sticking out of the corn husk, the silks, should be brown.  The ear should feel plump and firm.  If you peel back the husk and insert your fingernail into a kernel, a milky liquid should come out.  The kernels should be their mature color from yellow-white to bright yellow depending on the variety, unless you are growing a colored variety like blue.

I pull the whole plant out of the ground, rip off the corn ears and send everything else to compost, including the husks and silks. If someone plans to cook them in the husks and a special request is made, I still open everything up before bringing them in the house. The concern is bugs. The last thing you want is bugs munching on your unopened ears in the kitchen.  Even worse, opening up a cooked, bug filled, ear of corn. Yuck! 

Wishing You Luck

While there are some areas where corn will grow like weeds, Iowa comes to mind, tropical corn can be tricky.  If you plant at the correct times, it will do wonders for your crop.  Setting your plants up for success will also go a long way towards being a consistently successful corn grower.  Wishing you a successful crop!