I planted on June 22, with soaked seeds, leaving 74 days until my planned party the Sunday before Labor Day. The corn came up as planned and started growing normally.
The first sign of trouble was about 3 weeks ago, when I came back from my travels to find very short corn. Most of it was only about 4' tall:
It's normally over my head by this time, and so dense that I can't walk through it without getting small cuts and pollen all over myself.
I despaired that I'd somehow screwed something up. But the soil moisture seemed fine (it's on a timered drip system), and I had fertilized it every 3-4 weeks since planting. It's in a patch that I'd used 3 years ago, and I had done the identical soil prep as I do every year, tilling in municipal mulch/compost with a generous layer of bagged steer manure.
But things were going to be ok; the stalks were making ears. The ears were small, but they'd be edible.
I was traveling a lot, so I didn't get around to BtK treatment, and I knew I'd have serious corn earworm infestation, just as I'd had a few years ago. That time I "fixed" the problem by going through the patch the morning of the party with a bypass lopper, cutting off the top ~2-3" from each ear.
This year I figured I'd save more corn by lopping the ears a week prior. I went through all ~130 ears and extracted earworm larvae and cutting off corn tops. Success!
Except that by opening the ears, I was exposing them to the peafowl. During the week before the party the neighborhood feral peafowl invaded my patch and ate every single ear:
Two days before the party I saw this, and I panicked. The evite had already gone out, and 80+ people were scheduled to arrive and pick corn for a corn-themed harvest party.
The solution was cases of corn from the local Smart & Final (warehouse store) for $0.33/ear. I bought 135 ears and a box of skewers for candy apples.
I stuck the skewers into the bottoms of the ears and tried tying the sticks to the stalks. It worked, and looked pretty convincing, but it took wayyyyy too long. There was no way I was going to tie 135 ears to stalks. I ended up just "planting" the ears in the ground, at the base of each stalk:
"Them City kids will never know the difference!"
I did get questions, mostly from parents, but the kids "picked" the corn, and there was much rejoicing. So the crop was a failure, but the party was a success!
Next year I'll have to review my corn plans.
