Sweet Corn Update

I am grateful to Val Webb on Kitchen Gardeners International who has pointed me to the Ohio State University poster of Abnormal Corn Ears, where a similar condition is described a "Tassel Ear". There is more HERE.

Ours are definitely on "tillers", side shoots to the main stem. There is no useful corn on those side stems.

I now suspect we have so many tillers as the soil is too rich. In both gardens the crops have followed the green manure cycle, in one of them there was also horse manure added. The corn loved it so much it thought it would throw in a few extra side shoots.

Reading further, we find that some hybrid varieties are more susceptible to tillering under certain conditions, although these are not specified.

So there, I think, we have it. Unfortunately we have just put in another lot of seedlings of that variety, but they will be the last.