A COMPLETE GUIDE TO GROW SWEET CORN IN CONTAINERS

Every gardener wants to grow sweet corn In today's episode we will look at how easy it is to grow sweet corn in containers Although we will cover sweet corn in today's video There are several different types of corn Field corn is generally used in its dry form To make a lot of industrial products Sweet corn is a variety with soft and tender kernels And the ones that we love to eat And the final a variety of corn is called specialty corn And I will be covering Specialty corn in a future episode So for our containers he will be growing this variety of corn which is organic called golden Bantam Corn can be either sowed in seed starting mix in individual pots And once the seats are sowed They usually germinate in about 10 days or so And you can also sow the corn seeds directly in the container And they will germinate as well I recommend using a container 5 gallons or larger So let's look at what kind of pests You need to deal with when you're growing corn So the most common type of pests that attack corn are the corn earworm and the corn borer And you can see some damage that's caused by some of the bad insects that attack the corn plant and you need to take some action So for most of the corn pests its pretty easy You can use Neem Oil very effectively To kill almost all types of insects that attack corn So what you basically do is mix The required quantity of Nem Oil In a gallon tank sprayer And mix it with water and once that is done you just use this mix too spray your corn plants Now if you want a detailed video on how to do this please check out the video on your screen and you should be able to see this process and a lot more detail to avoid any harm to beneficial insects like bees It is recommended that you use Neem Oil spray late in the evening when the beneficial insects are not active So corn plant produces these lush green leaves really thick stems and a lot of foliage and that usually means that for such plants like corn you need to supply a very high nitrogen fertilizer all through the growing season so what does this mean when growing corn well it means two things: first you need to have a lot of rich organic matter like manure compost, worm castings and this will help boost the level of nitrogen naturally in the soil and the next thing that you should know is that the plant needs a high Nitrogen fertilizer all thru the growing season now some of you have asked me what does a high nitrogen fertilizer mean well you can check out the video description for some links to some commonly available fertilizers that are high in nitrogen and these are some of those examples so the first option is to use something like blood meal which is very high in nitrogen and the other option is to use fish emulsion which is also very high in nitrogen now if you do not like using animal products you can use an all-purpose fertilizer specifically designed for vegetables and other crops and this is not only high in nitrogen it also supplies the other ingredients like phosphorous and potassium So most corn plants are wind pollinated and sometimes it might be tempting to look at the corn growing so big and then go ahead and harvest the cobs out of the corn plant however note that after the corn has formed it does take some time for all the corn kernels inside or the corn seeds inside to form before they're ready to harvest now the corn plant has these male flowers that you can see on the top and then the female flowers or the female part of the corn plant are just above the corn the silks right here so what do you need to do is just gently feel the silk part of the corn and once this turns a little dark and dry that's really the time and you can start harvesting your corn so here you can see that the corn silk is pretty dry and and by feeling around the corn I was able to conclude that this corn was ready for harvest So let's open up this corn and see how well this corn plant has formed the kernels inside so you can see that the kernels are very well formed you might have some spaces where the corn kernels are missing but as long as you have most of the kernels in tact you can conclude that you've had a good harvest so as you can see here this is a very good looking corn and once you harvest such corn you'll be happy that your hard work has paid off and you can harvest lot of corn from just a few corn plant SO in this whiskey barrel container I'm growing about three or four corn plants and each of them will send out a lot of shoots around them producing lot of corn so the corn plan is always grown as an annual which means that it will grow for one season and then die so this is our whiskey barrel container and you can see how dense the root system is for this corn plant so about 3-4 corn plants sending out this massive root system alt throughout the container and this is the reason why I like growing corn in large containers like whiskey barrels because they really need all that room in the container to send out these roots which in turn will give you very nice corn so this is how I like to eat my corn now I'm cooking my corn directly on a gas cooktop however if you have a charcoal grill or barbecue grill you can easily cook corn on charcoal And it tastes even better so what I do is I just roast the corn directly on the stove and it takes about five minutes or so for the corn to get cooked this way and after its roasted what I do is I just take some salt and some lime or lemon and then just take a pinch of salt and then rub over the corn all around it and this really gives a very nice punch to the flavor of corn and and I always like to eat my corn in this way and if you do not like the lemon and salt you can just eat the roasted corn and it tastes just as good So which type of corn do you like to crew do you like to grow corn that is very sweet Or do you like to grow corn that's not very sweet do let me know share your opinions and I'll see you again soon Happy Gardening