Hi, I’m Farm to Table chef Teca Thompson, at TecaThompson.com. And today, we’re talking about how to hand pollinate corn. So, corn pollinates through the wind usually. But, if you have single-stalk or a small strand of corn, hand pollination is necessary, as they can’t get the proper pollination they need on their own because the grouping is not big enough. So, I’m just going to teach you a simple way how to hand pollinate your corn. You’re going to take the tassel – this is the tassel of the corn, and this is the male part. And this is the silk – this is the female part. So, corn is monoecious, which means it has a male and female seeds on the same plant. So, I’m going to just take a tassel of corn, and I’m going to cut it off. And, you’re just going to brush the male part – tassel – over the female silk. That way, it can get on the strands and begin to pollinate, like this. So, this is really good, again, if you have a small area of corn that you need to pollinate and it’s just not going to be big enough to get it through the wind. This silk is – every one needs to be pollinated by a tassel, and every piece of silk is going to become a kernel of corn, and that’s how the corn grows is when it gets pollinated by the tassel. So, you’ll want to repeat this process about every week until your corn matures. And, that’s how you will hand pollinate your corn and make sure that it grows into all those each individual sweet beautiful kernels that we’re looking for at the end of our growing process. I’m Farm to Table chef Teca Thompson, at TecaThompson.com. That is how to hand pollinate your corn. Thank you for watching.
home section
