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My corn story starts during the winter season planning, scheming, and dreaming about planting and growing corn in my backyard garden. Visions of corn on the cob, creamed corn, and freezing the leftovers of my bountiful harvest were dancing around in my head. I had grown a small block of corn a few years back with terrible results, so this year I was going to do my research on how to grow corn successfully in raised beds. I poured over books, Pinterest, and YouTube videos to learn the best methods the internet could provide. This led me to discover that I needed to plant at least a 4ft x4ft block of corn to give my kernels their best chance to get pollinated. So, the plans started to sacrifice an entire raised bed to crazy corn dreams..

There are many varieties of corn available to choose from, but it’s important to decide what you want to use your corn for: feed for livestock, fresh eating, or making popcorn. I wanted corn for fresh eating, so I reviewed several sweet corn varieties adapted to Zone 9 and landed on the Sweet-Silver Queen Hybrid variety from True Leaf Market. I placed an order for 1/2 oz – Approximately 60 Seeds back in February for my 16 sqft. Bed and planned to sow them mid-March to early April.

Now I was so excited to plant them that as soon as the threat of frost was gone from Northeast Florida, mid-march, I sowed these suckers in the ground. When planting corn there are a few ways it can be done: 1.) In rows, 2.) In a triangular pattern, and 3.) In a square foot method. Choosing the square foot method was an easy choice because I had a small space to use and a perfectly square 4×4 bed. In the square foot method, you will measure out a square foot of your garden bed and plant a seed in each of the four corners. Since the package came with 60 seeds and I would need 64 seeds to fill the whole bed, I just left one square foot open and put a marigold in it. Once they were in the dirt I covered the space with some bird needing to deter them from pecking out the seeds before they germinated.

These particular seeds had a five-star review on True Leaf Market and they lived up to their rating with 100% germination. A month after planting this is what my Spring 2024 corn bed looked like:

FANTASTIC!

At this point, I started to fertilize with an all-purpose vegetable fertilizer from Epsoma called Garden Tone. I picked this up from my local Ace Hardware store, but most garden centers will carry this product. I followed the instructions for feeding rows and applied it every 2 weeks until they started to tassel:

Rows: Apply 1-1/3 cup each side per 5 ft. of row or 10 lbs. each side per 100 ft. of row.

!!Mid-Growing Corn Scare!!

May 2024 started with a beautiful cornbed getting taller by the day. I started to researching how to stake up corn in a raised bed because I didn’t realize how tall the stalks were going to get and saw articles about crop loss due to strong storms or wind events. It was too late for me to implement a strategy with this year’s crop and I was thinking I was only a month away from harvest, so I was not likely to have any issues with this crop, unfortunately, I was wrong.

The week of May 10th the weather reports were showing strong storms coming through into northern Georgia with potential impacts on Northeast Florida. As the week progressed it looked less and less that our area was going to be impacted by the storms. I was at work the day the weather was set to come through and watching out the window as no real rain came through, but the wind gusts were significant enough to blow large amounts of tree debris around. When I returned home, my corn bed had been FLATTENED! It was still alive, but it looked destroyed.

Immediately I was online frantically searching up topics such as wind-damaged corn, flattened corn…etc. It was heart wrenching because I thought all that work and time was going to be wasted, but then I came across this YouTube video of a lady filming the dissemination of her corn bed by a bad storm. To no surprise, it looked just like mine, but the clip showed a promising transformation of her corn bed going from flattened to miraculously standing back up over two weeks. An overwhelming sense of hope came over me that all was not lost and, so the long wait started.

At the end of those two weeks, the corn stood back up the best it could and I had a newfound respect for the resiliency of this vegetable.

Fast forward to the present, June 9th, and there are several ears of corn on many of the stalks getting ready to be harvested. To date, the corn harvest is about 1.5 lbs of ears that I blanched and removed half a pound of kernels. Harvest will continue through June and totals will be posted in early July!

Did you have a mid-growing scare??

If so, drop a comment below and tell us what growing zone you are from and the plant varieties you chose.

Happy Gardening Everyone!!