I have heard of people applying a few drops of mineral oil when the silks form to keep the worms off. Don't know if it works or not.

I will be growing a small patch of corn this year for the first time.

bzemomrn,

Year before last we made a serious attempt at corn by starting a lot of corn plants indoors in 1-liter pots (made from the bottom 60% of 2-liter soft drink bottles) and set them out in six staggered plantings, hopefully for an extended harvest. We staggered our planting times indoors so that all of our plants were 12 to 16 inches tall when we set them out.

Even in the relatively large pots, the plants were quite root bound when we set them out. The clear sides of the pots let you see the root development in good detail. Corn grows rapidly indoors or out, so the root-bound situation is unavoidable. That's not necessarily a bad thing because the root-bound rootball holds together very well and, after a little "kneeding" of the pot (the soft drink pots are nicely flexible), the whole rootball falls out of the pot nicely intact, even better than a commercial peat pot because there is nothing at all to impede the roots from growing directly into the soil.

As the plants grew nicely and tasseled and silked I was quite happy with this way of getting an early start on corn here in Maine. Maybe its just our location, but the moths of corn earworms did not show up, so we had no worms in our corn. If they had appeared, I would have sprayed with a Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) spray, which is a non-toxic biological control for a wide range of worms and caterpillars. Lots of BT spray on the silks was the only way we could get good corn in our Fort Worth garden, where both the corn ear worm and corn borers were serious problems.

Here in Maine we have not had to spray for any kind of insect pest so far. I may make an exception for cucumber beetles this year.

But back to the corn. It looked like we were going to get a great crop, but just as the ears were ripening the squirrels and chipmunks moved in. Apparently they preferred corn to everything else. The devastation was complete and we didn't get a single ear. As far as I know you can't spray for squirrels and chipmunks and we live in a forested area where they are quite abundant. Here it would require a completely fenced in area, including overhead, to keep the squirrels and chipmunks away from the corn.

For the time being, at least, I have given up on the idea of raising corn here. The little critters won. I used the space for watermelons this last year and they did well, so I will do the same this year. I like watermelons about as well as corn. Maybe someday I will expand our garden and fence in an enclosure for corn.

MM

Ah, so that's what I have to look forward to this year--fighting the squirrels and chipmunks for my corn.

veilchen, I have been applying mineral oil on the silk of my corn for quite a number of years. It seems to work fine. You to need to re-apply from time to time. I have very few pest problems with this.

Try it out!

my experience with mineral oil is that you should use it very sparingly...I used much more than a few drops and rotted out those which I was experimenting on my first time. The other corn I grew it seems I started too late and it never had a chance.

What I have learn has already been said above, I have seen raccoons wipe out an entire gardenof corn right at picking time...they are like monkeys picking bananas when it comes to helping themselves.

I feel a good challenge for this coming year to grow a successful crop of corn. I am looking forward to making homemade corn syrup!

I've had problems with corn earworms, and the best way I've found to avoid them is to use a drop or two of mineral oil in the silks. You have to be careful to wait until just after pollination, though, or you might get alot of undeveloped ears. It's about as hard to time that as picking the corn when it's ripe, just before the racoons move in for the harvest. I've planted three large crops of corn so far, and one of them was fantastic. That was my first crop, all Silver Queen. It takes a long time, but it's worth the wait. Plus, it looks so beautiful growing out back, with its ten foot high stalks. That's all I plan to grow this year.

Another tip: If you mix varieties, make sure they're compatible. You can really screw up the taste of your corn if you get cross pollination of certain types.

Silver Queen

also if you put too much oil...well it rots the corn if it cant breath. I thought if a little is good, a lot might be better...so I spilled it on...bad mistake...bad bad, I lost 90% of some beautiful ornamental corns which surrounded the palleted yard for my goats. I planted them 3 feet out from the fence or they would have yanked it right out of the groud and be proud of it!