IMO, is the work required to grow a few ears of sweet corn worth it? We are market gardeners and grow a lot of other crops. We don't have the space for corn, but we can buy it every week from another vendor at a reasonable price from late June -mid September. Your buckets will give you 2-4 ears one time from each bucket.

Agree that growing corn in this manner isn't worth the effort and has a low rate of success. But if you want to do it then you need to understand the nitrogen needs of corn. It needs a lot of it, in consistent amounts, and are normally applied at stages of growth to trigger changes in the plant.

Plus coffee grounds are a low-dose source of usable nitrogen and dependent on an active soil food web to covert what nitrogen they do contain into a form usable by plants. The same thing applies to using compost in containers. That active soil food web does not exist in a container.

Container growing of any crop has its own set of guidelines for what can be used to fill the container and when and how they must be fed. They are quite different from gardening in the ground. The color of the container itself is only a very minor issue.

So for best odds of success, use a high quality soil-less potting mix (not soil) to fill the container and provide regular supplements of a high nitrogen liquid fertilizer at at least 3 stages - when the plants have their first set of true leaves, when the plants are 12-18" tall, and again when they are 3' tall.

Also suggest some reading about this question over on the Container Gardening forum here.

Dave

I garden as an escape and as a challenge. Not out of necessity. I enjoy growing carrot varieties as well, another crop not worth the time and space to many. But I also believe that my young son seeing that this is where food comes from is a very important lesson.

The answer hat Dave gave is just what I'm looking for. This a new chapter that I will be learning about this summer. I'll still be buying corn from my local stand or farmers market, but will be enjoying the trial and errors associated with growing my own. In containers.

digdirt - I don't grow corn but always understood that since it is wind pollinated it needs to be grown in blocks and a certain number of plants is needed to avoid partial ears. We don't know the name of this container corn but is there one that doesn't need a quantity of plants to produce ears?

floral - you are quite right about pollination but they have developed a couple of small hybrids varieties (small plants and small ears) that as long as there are 3-4 plants "might" pollinate enough to produce a couple of full ears. Of course you can also hand pollinate to improve the odds IF you can get the silks and tassels to develop in sync.

As for any 3 Sisters approach, even in the garden much less in a container, the problems with that approach have numerous discussions of failed attempts here.

Dave

Growing "three sisters" in a container would be fun and a nice reminder of how the folks who were here before us lived. One of the folk talkes passed down was that the Indians told the pilgrims or some early settlers that corn was a hungry plant and to plant a fish in each hill. Don't know if that's a true story, but corn is a hungry plant so plan on side dressing, etc. I also think that corn in a container is a waste of time. However, if it's for therapy, then that's a good thing, just to see if you can do it.

I also want to note that my suburban garden is tiny. Maybe 25 feet long, 5 feet wide. I already have flowers and a birdbath there in addition to 6 X 5 raised bed. My space is very limited. Container gardening is very ideal for me right now. I think I'll take what I got here and use it as a starting point.

If you have very limited space pole beans can be grown in a container. They are big seeds which germinate quickly, just right for a child. You could even germinate them on a paper towel for educational purposes. They then climb attractively, produce pretty flowers and give a crop which goes on for weeks. I'm not saying don't try the corn but beans would be a very rewarding vegetable to grow too. If runner beans grow well in your area I'd recommend them especially.

Go for it! If it satisfies something you want to do, do it. If it works out for you, wonderful, if it doesn't, at least you won't always wonder. Also, you might consider adding containers to your garden fence posts then planting pole beans or cukes or squash in them. They'll grow down instead of up and will give you more produce for the small space you have.