I think I'll plant some corn too.

I was at the Lowes today for something unrelated and wandered out into the garden center. Seeds intrigue me. Very small seedlings cost a few dollars for a 9 plants. That's not too bad. Larger seedlings cost $3-$10 each. I just can't brig myself to pay that. The whole point of growing your own is to save some money. A package of seeds goes for $1-$2 and there are many (>20) seeds in a package. And there are some plants that just don't transplant well. Corn is one of those plants. If a corn plants root system is damaged, it doesn't recover very well. In addition to the usual roots that grow near the surface, the small plant sends out a tap root shortly after germination. Any roots that are damaged during transplant (including the single tap root) won't grow, so if you are going to transplant you have to do it when the plants are still very small. And besides, corn has a very high germination rate if you wait til the soil is nice and warm.

So I bought two packs of Burpee's sugar enhanced corn. I grew up with Burpee's Silver Queen, but they didn't have any of that. I bought 1 pack of Burpee's Ambrosia, which is an 18 row white/yellow hybrid. The other pack is Burpee's Ruby Queen. It is supposed to be like Silver Queen, except the kernels are a nice ruby red color. Each pack was < $2. Nice.

After I bought my 2 packs of corn, I was investigating when to plant. During this time, the obvious became obvious to me. If you plant to different varieties of corn close to each other (where close is <600 yards), there is a pretty good chance of cross pollination. The closer together the higher the chance. Duh! My two varieties will be about 2 feet apart. Hmm. The solution seems to be to stagger the planting. Corn is generally fertile for about 2 weeks. So if the second planting goes in 3 weeks after the first planting, I won't get any cross pollination. To help my chances, I'll wait til all of my first planting sprouts or June 1st, which ever come first.