Has anyone had trouble with heirloom corn(dent type) putting on ears in the middle of the tassles? Any ideas what causes it?
Weird Ears
All corn does that once in a while. From the number of questions posted this year (mostly sweet corn) it does seem more prevalent this year.
Thanks! I thought it might be genetic so I cut them all off as soon as noticed them and fed them to my chickens. In fact the corn is a two hundred year old type from Georgia I got from a friend in the usda to try for drought tolerance testing. Since it was planted the first of April I have had only four inches of rain.I have only watered it four times and it has done well.
That is one school of thought, which I subscribed to 60 years ago. Much older and dumber, I don't deal in absolutes any more. This was posted in another website and is the theory I believed years ago. I no longer am as sure. "Its a throwback to teosinte, the wild Central American/Mexican ancestor of corn. Before humans became involved, "ears" didn't exist. All of the kernels formed on the tassels, and often not even in a discrete little unwrapped ear as in the photo, but individually along the tassel. " It appears in modern corns but perhaps not with the frequency that it did in the old open pollinated corn.