As mentioned in previous posts, I planted a few stalks of corn in our Victory Garden. Well, it’s time to start pollinating! I’ll have to hand pollinate because there aren’t enough stalks planted to guarantee that they will be pollinated naturally. I would have needed to plant at least 4 rows of corn to realistically expect the wind to handle pollinating my ladies! Luckily, hand pollinating isn’t hard.

Get to it!
You’ll need to collect the pollen from the male part (tassels) of the plant to dust onto the female part (the silks). I do that by shaking some of the pollen into a glass jar. The female part of the plant is what turns into your ears of corn, and each silk strand turns into individual kernels on your ear of corn. You’ll want to do your best to get some pollen on each strand so that the ears are full! I use a paint brush to brush the pollen collected onto as many strands as possible. You’ll want to do this for about a week. When I go back out tomorrow, I’ll start with the lady who was brushed last today. That’s in attempt to distribute pollen evenly between the ears of corn.

Some people just tear a tassel off and rub it onto the silks like a feather duster. I might do that if I had more corn planted, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough tassels to go that route this summer.

Pollen collected to dust 2 females. I didn’t need much!

Pollen dusted onto the silks!