Growing Corn - Beginner's Guide Seed to Harvest

Hey corn lovers! In this video we are going from seed to harvest with a beginner's guide learning how to grow corn. First we need seeds. Here's what mine look like. Now some people say you should start corn in pots, then transplant them, and some people say you should only direct so. While we can transplant corn, it doesn't mean we should. It's mostly a waste of time and the plants don't love that process. Most seeds come with the directions to direct so, which is as easy as making a hole in some dirt and placing your seed inside. For best results we want to aim to plant our seed about two inches deep. If we plant it too shallow the plant might not be very sturdy, might fall over later, and if we plant it too deep it might never emerge. If we sow our seeds with the tip pointing downwards the plant will emerge faster. It can take two to six days for corn to emerge depending on the conditions and depth of planting. It's usually recommended to grow corn plants in rows six to twelve inches apart with two to three feet between each row. This spacing is most relevant when you're growing a ton of corn like a whole field's worth. If you've just got a small patch in your garden I wouldn't worry about spacing two too much or having it in specific rows. But corn does get pretty tall so be careful what you plant nearby so that you're not overshading something you're hoping to grow. Once our seeds are planted we just need to water them occasionally. We are looking to get about one inch of water per week. Watch the weather to see how much rain you get and mix in manual waterings when and if they are necessary. I watered my plants sporadically, never measuring the amounts of water they received. If it was a dry spell I watered them, if it rained I didn't. This went on for a while and my plants grew consistently until eventually I had my first signs of a tassel. Which brings us to our next big step in the corn growing process, pollination. Manually pollinating our plants will help us make sure our corn looks like this, not this. Corn is wind pollinated as opposed to insect pollinated. Insect pollinated plants have big bright flowers often with a strong scent which they use to attract the insects. Corn doesn't have big bright flowers. It has tassels and ears. Tassels emerge from the tops of each corn stalk and when they're ready they open themselves up to release their pollen. These are the male flowers of the plant. If we shake a tassel we can see the pollen being released from it. The ears put out these stringy things called silks which collect that pollen. These are the female flowers. For corn to pollinate on its own we likely need to grow a bunch of plants close to one another. More plants will increase the odds that some pollen will blow into the silks but not everyone can grow a whole field of corn to ensure they get good pollination rates. This is where hand pollinating our plants comes in. We can pull a tassel out of a stalk and bring it into direct contact with our exposed silks. You can shake the tassel around and watch as that pollen builds up on the silks. If we do this every day or two while the tassels and silks are emerging we'll pollinate all of our plants and grow a ton of corn. At this point we're waiting for our corn to develop and be ready for harvest. If we harvest too early or too late our corn probably won't taste very good and we've just wasted an entire growing season. Ain't nobody got time for that. Let's look at a few examples to see the signs of that perfect harvest time. If we harvest too early our corn might look like this with underdeveloped kernels that do not taste sweet. This is the beginning of a corn year. The silks are just starting to emerge and there's nothing here to harvest. Then our corn starts to grow. This is way too early to harvest though. Our corn will start to get bigger. Still too early. White silks mean that it is still too early to harvest. These silks are pinkish which happens with some varieties. Still a sign that it's too early. Now we've got one here with browning silks and it looks pretty plump. These silks though are still white near the top and a bit moist to the touch. This is still too early but it is very close. Now we've got some examples ready to harvest. This one has brown silks all the way through which are also dry to the touch. Another example here where the silks are completely dried and actually starting to separate from the corn. And another one with brown dried silks that's ready to harvest. If we're ever unsure about our corn we can peel back some of the leaves and inspect the kernels. We can pierce a kernel and observe what comes out. Clear liquid is a sign that it's still too early and those kernels aren't sweet yet. White milky liquid suggests that the corn is ready to pick. If we harvest too late the corn will probably look fine but it will taste very dense and starchy as opposed to sweet. This corn was left too late and we see that the leaves around it are fading fast. We see the same thing happening here. We can see just how light these leaves are compared to an example that we harvested on time. So there it is, seed to harvest with corn. I managed to grow a bunch of corn on my very first try. As long as you have decent soil, growing corn is pretty easy and the fresh stuff tastes amazing. Best of luck with your own corn grows and be sure to share your tips, tricks, and questions in the comment section. Happy harvesting!