My ambrosia corn is starting to show ears, but so many of them the leaves have pulled away & they are exposed even though they are now yet ripe. Is this a problem? Should I try to pull the leaves back up over the kernels?
Is this a problem with corn?
You should be able to pull the husk back over the ear and tie it with some twine to hold them closed...
Never seen that before, though I did experience just about every other issue before I finally gave up on growing corn!
Not only did some of my corn ears look weird while they were growing, the looked VERY weird after they were picked. It's almost as if a second "branch" was growing next to the ear. This happened with about 1/3 of all the corn ears. I did notice that these were all the second or third ear on each stalk. The first ear on the stalk all look fine. I've grown Ambrosia corn before and never had this problem.
Postscript:
Now, some of the truth comes out. I was out of town for a few weeks when the corn was about 2' high. At that point, it had not yet developed tassels. My DH was watching over it & one day he say a "bug." So he went to one of the big box stores and got an insecticide. He sprayed the corn, including down the top where it was growing. According to DH, a few days later, the top growing point started turning brown & dying. That's when the corn started putting out side shoots, By the time I returned, He had removed all the dead growth & "neglected" to tell me. I'm wondering if the production side shoots was the corn's attempt to continue growing.
This message was edited May 30, 2010 10:33 AM
Yoiks! Doesn't exactly look like something I'd be interested in eating!!! Sort of looks like mutant corn from Mars!
HOly cow! maybe it 's got some disease or something, that's the strangest thing i've ever seen, I'm watching to find out myself. that's some weird stuff. I had to laugh at sequee's post LOL does look like a mutant corn from mars or something ;0)
LOL! It looks like something off of "The Simpsons". If things keep going the way they have been, by next summer everything we grow down here will look like that!
That corn may have looked weird, but it was delicious!! I cut off as much as I could & fried it down with a little butter & onions. Delicious!
This was the response from another gardening group where I posted the same question:
Quoting:
Sometimes corn sets kernels on the tassels. Yours looks like it is a combination of tassel and kernels on the top of suckers. Suckers form from the nodes below the ear nodes. So what you are looking at aren't ears. They're the tassel of the suckers that have both the male and female parts.
Sounds kinky! Well, you got more corn than I will because the donkey next door just came over here and ate over 3/4 of the row.
Ain't that jest like a jackass!
Yep! So today I'm making "scare-donkeys" since I don't have a problem with crows. Yet.....
LOL! How, pray tell, are going about THAT???
it involves a lot of tinfoil pie pans (which are not cheap anymore...$2 each!) and metallic party streamers from Party City. wish I had a camera. it's kind of a "disco scarecrow". he hasn't been over here to check it out yet. the cats are steering clear of it though!
Oh my - I don't check this thread for a few days and WOW!!
jomoncon - glad the corn tasted great cuz it sure does look kinda spooky!
LizaMouse - you need to post a pic of that scare-donkey - lol... Poor donkey won't know what in the heck to think!
Yeah, please post photos. I'm thinking it just might stave off the birds and other critters, too. I'm having my worst year ever with critters.
I would love to post pictures but I dropped my digital camera and it broke. I may try to pick up a cheap one. Sequee, I'm over-run with armadillos. They haven't been in the garden yet but they have holes dug everywhere else.
Armadilloas! That's a new one to me! Don't EVEN know what I'd do if I saw one of those!!
My issue is primarily squirrels. Every morning I go to work and every morning THEY go to work - on my garden! Once the plants get established, I think they'll be ok, but as seedlings, they are getting beat up. I come home each evening and have to replant things that have been dug up, and straighten things that have been toppled, and uncover things that were buried. I've lost a few Peekaboo Eyeball Plants and Elfin Impatiens, and I'm not sure the Malabar Spinach is going to make it, but so far all of the replanted tomatoes are doing ok. They just go through shock and have to start the growing process all over again. Very frustrating.
This is my first armadillo experience and they are very destructive. There's no way I could plant anything around the deck. It wouldn't survive one night. I've never thought about squirrels as garden pests but I guess they could be. The cats here keep the squirrels away. My replanted corn is doing ok too. But like you said, it has to sit there for a while weeks and get over the shock of being uprooted and then stuck back in the ground.
I love those eyeball plants. They're one of my favorites.
Me, too - especially since my doggie's name is PekeBoo!
Oh, the squirrels jump right off the tree brances into the garden beds, then climb their way out over the deer fencing, wreaking havoc wherever they go! It's those darned nuts. People keep saying, "They're just burying nuts for the next time there's a famine."