horselover wrote:
Not@home wrote:



horselover wrote:


Another corn question - The corn that I grew this year had some cobs
with bare areas with few or no kernels. Is this because of poor
pollination?


Probably yes. The tassels have one silk for every potential kernel.
If a silk is not pollinated, that kernel will not develop, while
nearby kernels that were pollinated will develop.

This corn patch is a square of 16 plants, 4 rows of 4 each.

three rows were Golden Bantam, one row was a butter and sugar hybrid
called Epi d'Or (I live in France, hence the French variety name.)

I also wondered - why is corn planted in hills? Fields of corn are
obviously not, but all home gardeners I know plant corn in hills. Is
it to give the roots an easier time in looser dirt?


Since pollination is so important, I plant in hills so each of the
stalks in the hill will have an opportunity to pollinate all the others.

I guess I don't have the right mental picture of this - why would the
fact that the stalks are on hills make pollinating easier than if they
were planted at the same closeness but on flat ground?

My parents planted in hills, but never said why. I know their garden
didn't have good drainage, so perhaps the reason was to avoid having the
seeds in standing water, as they didn't have the treated seeds available
then. Now, I just use the term to distinguish from planting in rows; by
the time I put the seed in the hills, and tamp down the dirt, the hills
are virtually flat. The closeness of the stalks is what is important
for good pollination.