Are you directly seeding it in the garden, & if so, how is your soil? Did you ammend it with any compost, gypsum, lime, peat moss or anything? Are you watering from a hose and how cold is the water? Did you direct seed the peppers & beans in the garden? Peppers are usually sown indoors anywhere from about 8-10 weeks before your last spring frost in a soilless mix, grown to transplant size under fluorescent lights for 16 hours/day, hardened off for a week or so and planted a week or two after your last frost date when the soil temps are over 55-60 degrees.

Depending on the variety & type of corn, they usually need similar soil temps, and supersweets need even higher soil temps to sprout, I think over 60-65. How deep are you planting them, indoors or out, and how are the temps & soil?

Be patient. :) Also, a warning: corn seedlings look like grass. After all, that's what corn is -- like all grains, it is a grass. Just a grass whose seeds are rather yummy ;)

If it never comes up, squirrels might have gotten it. They'll dig it up. Don't worry yet, though. It can take a while sometimes. Think you were waiting for a while for germination? I've recently been growing sequoias (2-3 months), coffee (1.5-2 months), and passionfruit (1-3 months).

Back to corn. Once it gets established, it grows like a weed, and will shade out competing weeds :) The saying is, "knee high by the fourth of July", but I find it's more like "knee high by early to mid June." Guess it depends on when you plant. Corn is a pretty easy plant to grow.

Oh, by the way -- if you do have squirrels, and there's *anything* nearby that they could climb on, they'll jump onto the corn and eat it when it's nearing maturity. I've read that nylons over the corn once it's fertilized will protect it. Apart from that, though, no worries. :)

depending on the weather corn can take as long as 3 weeks to sprout.

Be patient. Corn puts down a root before it pop's out of the ground. Dig down in the row and look for the sprout. The root may be 3 to 4 inches long. When it pop's it will be a tiny pointed stalk.

Instead of improving germination of sweet corn the newer SH2 (shrunken) gene hybrids are worse. The kernels, being shrunken in appearance need to hydrate even longer than normal (sugary) corn before the seeds will germinate. If soils are dry or cool you may get poor results. I agree that weeds have a distinct advantage.

I agree with Paul that you can dig up a few seed if you are impatient. While you are doing that check to see how deep you burried them and if the water you've applied is actually getting to the seed.

The corn I planted was a Silver Sweet (Hybrid). As for planting, everything was directly sowed into the ground about an inch deep.

Temps here have really fluctuated.. low 50's at night to anywhere from high 50's to mid 80's during the days.

The garden itself is aprox 20 x 40 feet and was amended with 6 yards of compost to mostly clay. If you hit it with water, you'll be like, where did the water go? Because it just soaks it up. If you don't water for a day and check the soil, when the crust is dry, you don't need to dig an inch before you find moist soil.

Well, I guess I'll just let everything go for another couple weeks to see if anything comes up. If nothing happens in the next 2 weeks, I'll look at reseeding.

Thanks for everyone's input!! I was worried because I had seen a post a few weeks ago where people said their corn popped up in 2-3 days and took a max of 5 days.

Mine seem to sprout out overnight when the rains finally came in. I've got stalks that are nearing a foot now. We've had lots of nice warm weather.

low 50's at night to anywhere from high 50's to mid 80's during the days.

Measure your soil temperature which I assume is still cool from the sounds of it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Seed Sprouting and Temperatures

Violet.. Thanks for the chart and based on it, somethings gotta be wrong with what I'm doing.

I planted lettuce and spinach also, but that was done last Friday. Based on the chart, I should be getting something up based on a soil temp of 59F, but there's no sign of anything coming up other then some bean sprouts, which I didn't plant (They're coming up here and there) and weeds.

I find that sweet corn comes up in 5 to 9 days depending on the weather. I just checked my third planting a while ago. It was planted 3 days ago I think. It had a root sprout and the start of a stalk sprout. I like to plant 1½ inches deep in warm weather and tamp the row down after planting.

Folks, I've got news!!

This morning when I went to hoe some weeds in the garden, there was not a sign of anything coming up. I went out around 7:30pm to water and to my suprise, I have lift off! There's some corn coming up, there's also soy, spinch, okra and broccoli. WAHOOOO!!!

I don't know what happened but we had temps in the 80's today. Maybe that's all that was needed. I'll check again tomorrow to see what else might be up.

The importance of patience. :) Congrats!
Corn is an easy to grow, attractive, and tasty plant. You should enjoy it. :)

Nothing like some springtime warmth to kick the seeds into action. I'm growing corn this year in a couple of raised beds. I planted on Monday, May 7th and it came up Fridayl May 11th. I put a plastic sheet over the bed which kept things very toasty underneath. The heat definately speeds things up, but I was still quite surprised.