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Growing Corn on South Beach.
We thought we'd try growing some corn in our plot. The seeds were planted in early March, and by mid-April, they were 4-6 inches tall and looking quite healthy :
As you can see, Diane is experimenting with 'square foot' gardening methods. Hopefully this will be a good alternative to growing in rows, and maybe more suited to our allotments. We've done a similar thing with our beans, and we sure have a productive couple of square feet with them!
However, at the end of April, although the plants were looking nice and tall (12-18 inches), we noticed strange brown material which looked a bit like soil on the leaves, especially near to the center of the plants. About the half the plants seemed to exhibit this. A healthy plant, and an affected one are shown below.
Opening up these plants revealed a nasty looking black 'worm'. Obviously the larvae of a moth of some kind, we removed about 8 plants and made sure the worms were dispensed with. How sad to see our lovely corn destroyed already. :(
Our first thought was that they could be corn borers. These crafty creatures bore into the stem at the base, and eat their way up to the top. However, comparing the worm (below) to that on a web page at the university of Kentucky revealed that they were not indeed corn borers.
From looking at various resources online, we've ruled out the following :
-James and Diane.
We thought we'd try growing some corn in our plot. The seeds were planted in early March, and by mid-April, they were 4-6 inches tall and looking quite healthy :
As you can see, Diane is experimenting with 'square foot' gardening methods. Hopefully this will be a good alternative to growing in rows, and maybe more suited to our allotments. We've done a similar thing with our beans, and we sure have a productive couple of square feet with them!However, at the end of April, although the plants were looking nice and tall (12-18 inches), we noticed strange brown material which looked a bit like soil on the leaves, especially near to the center of the plants. About the half the plants seemed to exhibit this. A healthy plant, and an affected one are shown below.
Opening up these plants revealed a nasty looking black 'worm'. Obviously the larvae of a moth of some kind, we removed about 8 plants and made sure the worms were dispensed with. How sad to see our lovely corn destroyed already. :(
Our first thought was that they could be corn borers. These crafty creatures bore into the stem at the base, and eat their way up to the top. However, comparing the worm (below) to that on a web page at the university of Kentucky revealed that they were not indeed corn borers.
From looking at various resources online, we've ruled out the following :
- armyworms
- european corn borers
- cut worms
- corn earworms (also known as the tomato fruitworm and the cotton bollworm)
-James and Diane.
