Hi all, Lane County Extension Master Gardener John Fischer here with KLCC's Good Gardening.
It's almost time to start eating corn from your garden- maybe a few of you already are. But before you shuck those ears, boil them, and spread on the butter, consider the work people and nature did to get that summer treat to the table.
Most of the corn grown in the US is field corn. The vast majority is used as animal feed and for fuel alcohol production. Only one percent is the sweet corn we eat for dinner. And all sweet corn is hybridized by using pollen from one variety and female flowers from another. Producing seed requires planting rows of two varieties, removing the male flowers from one variety, and then saving the seed produced by those plants whose male flowers were removed. The seeds are created through hybridization or cross breeding. There are no genetically modified corn seeds available to the home gardener. You plant those seed, and the rest is up to nature.
Each potential corn kernel on an ear has a strand of corn silk connected to it. A grain of pollen travels down the hollow silk to the ovule to produce a kernel. If that happens successfully 800 times, you get an ear of sweet corn. The total distance travelled by the pollen inside the silk of each ear is twice the length of a football field. We eat the corn before it has fully matured. And you can't save the seed anyway because hybrid plants don't breed true.
Corn should be planted in blocks of three or more rows, so it takes a fair amount of space. By planting four times through the summer we usually get corn through October. So consider making room next year. Getting an eight-foot tall plant graced with miraculous sweet ears in 90 days is an amazing thing to watch. And an ear of lightly salted sweet corn is a wonderful thing to eat.
Copyright 2021, KLCC
