I have a strip of fertile ground on the south side of our house that
gets full sun. It runs east-west along the side of our garage, with no
trees or shrubs anywhere nearby. The area is about 25' long and sticks
out from the house about 5'.

I decided to try planting corn for about the first time in perhaps 11
years as a late crop after harvesting cabbage in late June. I soaked
the seeds of 3 varieties of sweet corn to give it a head start, then
planted them once they started to sprout, on July 3. The plants are now
roughly 8 to 8 and a half feet tall.

I fertilized the plants lightly every 4 weeks, and also mulched
somewhat lightly with straw to keep the weeds down. I thinned the
plants out to about 9" or 10" apart, in rows 12" or 13" apart. I
figured that with the rows this short, I can just reach in to harvest
the ears.

The plants did fantastic up to when they started to tassel, about 7
days ago. I noticed that lower leaves started to yellow, then brown and
wither. I thought that perhaps something was eating them, and applied a
bit of sevin. Then I looked at some photos online, and saw today that
it might be some sort of northern leaf blight, so I applied daconil
herbicide.

Today has been a windy day, and 4-6 of the plants have blown
completely over. Things are not looking good! I noticed that the
plants are only just now starting to put out those tiny side bracing
roots that come down from about 1" above the soil surface, so they are
not helping to brace the plants.

It looks like I may have to resign myself to my second sweet corn
failure (2 out of 2). The first time was caused by squirrels who
decided to bite the base of each plant, and eat a tiny bit, right when
the ears were starting to form. Likewise, this time the ears are just
starting to form, again.

Is there anything I might be able to do in order to help at least get
some sort of crop? I'm wondering if I needed to thin them out quite a
bit more, but everything looked great until the last 7 days.

Could part of it be due to my mulching with straw? It really kept
the weeds down, and helped retain soil moisture. However, I'm wondering
if it also may have retarded the root growth, and caused the corn to
have a shallow root system. Then again, the corn that blew over did not
come out at the roots - it bent over about 3' up.

*sigh*. I'm just not having good results with sweet corn.