Small sweetcorn plants in Spain - help!

[casa_tyr]

The first year I lived in Spain, we grew wonderful sweetcorn.

The past 2 years, we have had major problems - no pests, but very short plants. We grow from seed in the greenhouse, then plant out. The corn plants seem to tassle very quickly, while the cobs are very tiny. Then the cobs start to silk when they are very small, like a few inches long.

Any ideas? We fertilize once every 2 weeks, and water twice a week - it's hot, dry and sunny here!

[contadino]

Everyone around here tells me that corn won't grow here because it's too hot & dry, so I think your problem may be lack of water. Assuming your climate is like ours, I expect they'll need watering daily.

BTW, undeterred, next year I'm planning on trying the squash, corn, and climbing beans together combination.

[Millymollymandy]

My limited experience with sweetcorn (onto yr 4 now) is that it loves hot, dry weather and grows enormous, but when it is cool and wet it doesn't grow much and is stunted! This year mine are growing OK and forming cobs but the plants, whilst bigger than last year (wetter), are still way too small - lack of heat and sun I would think.

[contadina]

Ideal soil conditions for growing corn require both nitrogen and moisture, so a drought can severely effect harvests. We're going to plant some in large compost/manure filled trenches to hopefully retain sufficient of both for our next attempt.

Another point worth considering; are you planting in the same spot, as corn doesn't follow corn very well and will result in diminished harvests.

[casa_tyr]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I think the answer just may be that we had a cool damp spring, then it got hot very quickly. The corn tassled before the ears had a chance to grow properly.

We picked our first ears today. They are very small, about 5 inches at most, but the kernels are fairly well formed and uniform.

Any other ideas?