Wednesday, September 7, 2011

How to Fix and Support Blown Over Corn

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We have gotten some really good rain the last two days. That is good for the garden, but sometimes bad for my corn. When growing corn in really fertile soil, it doesn't take much for your corn to be blown over when it is wet, at least that is my experience.

That is what I came home to tonight after work, two sides just completely blown down to the ground. It stinks too because the ears are just forming and being pollinated. Normally I can just mound up some dirt around each stalk to get it to stand upright, but not this time. The silver queen stalks are so tall, they just flopped back over.

While pondering what to do, I gazed over on my patio and noticed I had a bag of 3 foot bamboo poles and bag of those plastic electrical wire tires. I inserted the poles into the ground in the opposite direction of the fallen stalks. I then used the wire ties to support each stalk to the bamboo pole. Once I ran out of poles, I used the wire ties to support the tops of stalks to each other. It worked really well and I hope it will hold. This method will work well for small plantings of backyard corn, and it is really easy to do.

This is the flattened peaches and cream corn.

This is the silver queen laid out on my eggplant and peppers.

Here are the results after supporting with bamboo and wire ties.
The corn is over 7 ft tall.

Close up of support system

Here are two stalks wired together toward their top.

3 comments:

Toyin O. said...

Great pictures and tips, thanks for sharing.

Cristy said...

Great idea! Glad you got some rain, and not too much damage.

Kris said...

Toyin - Glad it helped, I am becoming somewhat of an expert on fixing blown over corn.

Cristy - Thanks, the rain and cooler temps have been awesome. We barely broke 70's last two days.