Hi everyone, Lane County Extension Master Gardener John Fischer here with Good Gardening from KLCC.
It’s almost time to eat corn from your yard – maybe some of you are already. But before you peel those ears, cook them, and sprinkle them on the butter, think about the work humans and nature have done to bring this summer treat to the table.
Most of the corn grown in the United States is field corn. The majority is used as animal feed and for the production of fuel alcohol. Only one percent is the sweet corn we eat for dinner. And all of the sweet corn is crossed using pollen from one variety and female flowers from another. To produce seeds, it is necessary to plant rows of two varieties, remove the male flowers of one variety, and then save the seeds produced by the plants whose male flowers have been removed. The seeds are produced by hybridization or crossing. There are no genetically modified maize seeds available to the home gardener. You plant these seeds, and the rest is left to nature.
A strand of corn silk is tied to each potential kernel of corn on an ear. A grain of pollen migrates through the hollow silk to the ovule to produce a nucleus. If this is successful 800 times, you will be given an ear of corn on the cob. The total distance the pollen travels in the silk of each ear is twice as long as a soccer field. We eat the corn before it’s fully ripe. And you can’t save the seed anyway because hybrid plants don’t grow properly.
Corn should be planted in blocks of three rows or more so that it takes up a lot of space. Planting four times in summer usually gives us corn by October. So remember to make room next year. It is an amazing thing to decorate a two and a half meter tall plant with wondrous cute ears in 90 days. And an ear of lightly salted sweet corn is a wonderful thing to eat.
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