Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Toothless Corn

All I want is to have some sweetcorn in my garden. But I only planted a few of them over a period of time, which obviously reach maturity in different timing. Last week I harvested an ear - as you can see here, it looks like a toothless corn.

How can this happened?
As usual, I consult Mr. Google. Corn is usually pollinated by wind. Its pollen is so fine and light that it's easily fly away on slight blow of air. The problem is  when only single corn is planted (or planted far away from other corn) the pollen doesn't always land on the corn's silver hair, which is the female receptive organ.
Do you know that every single strand of hair represents each kernel of a corn? The failure to pollinate every strand may result in toothless corn as in the picture.

Lesson learned, now I am planting a new batch of Red Aztec Corn in 4x10 formation. Hopefully, I'll get a bunch of red jewels soon.
* Special thanks to AH for going through so many body search in smuggling seeds for me *

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

aahhaa - thanks for the tip :)