Ear to Ear: Growth Update

We picked a single ear of corn earlier in the week: Japanese Hulless Popcorn.  We only picked one because most of the silks still looked quite fresh, and we want to have our ears as full of kernels as possible.

How kernels are born:  Each time a pollen grain falls from the top tassels (the tippy top of the corn stalk), usually with the help of wind, and meets with a single silk from another stalk, it produces a single kernel.  The more meetings of pollen and silk, the better the chance of finding full ears of corn.  This process is called pollination.

When we shucked our ear of Japanese Hulless we found it was full, but that it didn't look fully grown.  Our resource book, "Grow the Best Corn" by Nancy Bubel, says corn will mature at it's own rate.  The dates given on the seed packets do not include how the weather (temperature and rainfall) will effect the growth.  We decided to give this corn more time to grow.

Today we did our weekly measuring.  Pop found a PVC pipe and we measured it to be exactly eight feet long.  Since he is much taller than we are, we had him hold the pipe up to the very top of the tallest stalks and then we measured the difference from the pipe to the ground. 

All the corn is growing nicely.  We thought nothing would beat the Bloody Butcher for height, but we were wrong!  It has been dwarfted by Zea Mays Squaw Corn.  The seed package said it grows to 12 feet high, but ours is 13 feet and 9 inches high! 

In the picture you can see the remains of a scarecrow we made for the Kernel a couple of years ago when he grew his garden where our corn field is now.  It's kind of spooky looking!