Your better chance is to hand pollinate the silk.Tassels
will have "little flags" for few days and by the time silk will emerge that you can hand pollinate.As soon as you see even few silk threads emerging start applying "little(pollen) flags" from tassels.Cut gently the tassel branch that has maximum flags and gently apply it to silks.Do this in the morning hours.Continue the process repeatedly for few days as long as the pollinating flags on the tassels are availble.
I plant corn in single row and hand pollinate since couple of years.

The pollen sheds for about a week or more I believe, it should overlap the timing of the silks. You can hand pollinate or shake the plant early in the day for a few days or more. If the 3 plants are that far apart, just do the same for each one when the silks appear on each. I personally haven't used chaman's method of cutting off tassel branches but there should be enough with no problems. I've bent a tassel from one plant to another plant's silks though. I think from reading that page I provided it sounded like the silk is receptive for 2-3 days and the pollen is viable only for a few hours in the morning, but the pollen sheds for a week or more.

My corn is planted closely and today I whacked it with a stick to get a pollen cloud to fall on the plants... I just stick a long stick like a broom handle down between two close rows and bang the stick back and forth hitting plants on both sides of it. Some of my silks are 2-3" long and a few plants the silks are just an inch. My plants will get "beatings" daily for a week!

Mark

Thanks Mark for your input.
catayanne,once you hand pollinate as described above the silk will start turning brown within an hour or so.You may open the leaf around the silk to spread more pollen.
Following are the few web sites I referred when I was studying hand pollination.

www.gmo-safety.eu/en/maize/corn_borer/144.docu.html
www.stratsoy.uiuc.edu/~vista/html_pubs/PLBREED/pl_breed.html
www.res2.agr.ca/CRECO/zea/zea01_e.htm

Thanks, I finally have some silk showing so I'm hoping the pollen can get to them. The other doesn't even show any silks at all. I'll try to get the pollen on the ones I see, and keep my fingers crossed! One of the tassels has little wheat colored "flags" and the other one has purple " flags" but they were in the same pot! Does this mean two different corn varieties?

No, just different ages of pollen anthers.

korney19 is right on the point.One of the two is matured ready to pour the pollen.I do not remember which of the two(colors) is ready to give away pollens.

The one with wheat colored "flags" is definitely giving pollen it makes a big cloud of it when I shake the plant, but I have been in the garden everyday anxiously looking over these stalks since before there were any tassels at all and this one was never purple unless it was only purple overnight once. The other purple one came out that way (this one is progressing double speed compared to the other) It has not yet produced much in pollen though. I had an accident while trying to bend the Wheat colored one's tassel down to the stalks to get more pollen on the silks (which I now have five beauties!)I snapped the center tassel right off! I about fainted. I quickly took it into the house, bagged it, stuck it in a vase of water and placed it in a sunny windowsill. So far I've gotten a bunch of pollen which I have sprinkled each morning over the silks. I am being much more careful with the other tassels since I don't know if this pollen from the broken tassel is even viable. The plants continue to grow and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If nothing else this has been a wonderful learning experience. I have never paid much attention to how corn grows. Indian or sweet, even though I have grown up surrounded by fields of it all my life. My family is getting a lesson in the miracle of corn as well! After explaining to my son how the kernels are formed, he now refers to the pollen as powdered gold and he is anxiously watching along with me! It's really pretty cool!

Just a follow up... I had a lot of success thanks to all your help. I got three corn stalks. two with two ears each and one with one. The single one ended up being a bi-colored ear of sweet corn! It was filling out nicely. the two rust colored ears were very full and the other two were a gorgeous red-black, so shiny and rich in color, it almost hurt my eyes to look at it! i had pollinated daily in the early morning, while the pollen lasted and low and behold! CORN!! I watched it grow and fill out and was so proud of my success! I had been anxiously watching the development and waiting for the stalks to brown, so I could put them in my fall display. If you noticed, I am speaking in the past tense. I looked out the window yesterday and I could only see the smallest of the three stalks standing upright. I went out to check and the other two stalks were broken and lying on the ground. jhe beautiful ears were chewed and almost completely eaten except for the sweet corn which they had apparently not liked, it was only nibbled on a little. One ear had been carried off. The culprits were squirrels! They destroyed all my hard work as only squirrels can do. I could not believe it!
I am so disappointed, but not discouraged. This was so much fun that I plan on planting more corn next year.
Does anyone know how to keep the squirrels away from it?
And if I've saved a couple of kernels, how can they be utilized for next years crop? I really would love to grow more of that red-black color.