Advice on corn smut, PLEASE...!!!

My Stowell's Sweet Corn (heirloom) will be ready Sept. 1st (100 days), and in checking today, I saw something ***bulging*** out of the top of an ear. It really freaked me out, I picked it, brought it in and took pics (will post next week). I called my county ext. agent, and he said that it was corn smut, and that it was soil borne. I did not know smut could make a kernal get as big as a half dollar!!!

Anyhow, I was fortunate that I caught it before the kernal busted open and spread it. No other ears on that stalk or in the field are affected (infected) that I can see without opening the husks.

So what to do? I asked what could bring this about, and he said not enough air circulation. My rows are 3-4 ft apart, with 12+ inches between stalks. And this is the Texas Panhanlde, the wind does NOT stop blowing.

Any experience or ideas or book knowledge would be much appreciated. I will be digging through my books and checking web sites, even though my agent said nothing could be done.

The corn was mulched with loose moldy alfalfa hay, could this be a source of the fungus???

Thanks~Crazyboutmycorn

Tamara,

Today, we found corn smut on the ears of our late corn (Lilly Miller, Golden Jubilee) which we plan to harvest in a week or so. We don't typically have high winds here, but did suffer a tremendous dust/thunder storm recently that really whipped the stalks around -- and they're 8-9' tall! We also mulched with hay/straw.

My copy of Sunset's Western Garden Problem Solver (1998) says that corn smut is most likely to occur in these situations:
1. the soil is high in nitrogen,
2. when plants have been injured by hail, blowing sand, insect damage, or careless use of garden tools,
3. when summer temperatures are 80-90 degrees F, or
4. when there is moderate rainfall as corn ears mature,

Interestingly, it also had this note:

"Other names for corn smut are boil smut, corn goiter, and corn-soot. In some areas, even in gourmet restaurants in the United States, the galls of common corn smut are prized as food."

*smiles*

I would like to know what our gardening veterans have to say about this, too, as it's only my first year growing corn and we didn't see this on our early corn (Lilly Miller Early Sunglow).

Donna

We chatted with our neighbors today, who are veterans at gardening, and discovered that they first experienced corn smut here just two years ago, and again last year. And they have been here a LONG time. :)

(Note: We live in a residential district, and not acres away from one another. *smile*)

After visiting the county extension center with samples for the diagnosis and basically bad news, they moved their corn patch at least 50' east of the original garden this year. They were quite disappointed in their crop as it still had evidence of the corn smut this year and only got one ear per stalk (as we also experienced in our new garden) unlike in previous non-smut years.

I don't know if they used seed from the previous harvests or started with new, but our seed was new.

Our winds prevail from the southwest; we are west of them, so I'm guessing we didn't 'get it' from them and we just all picked it up from the southwest.

*sigh*

Is there any hope for avoiding this in the future, or should we mark corn off the list of things to grow next year due to bad soil?

Donna

I haven't had smut for over 15 years here, and I have high summer temps here every summer.

There are resistant varities you can plant. (I prefer Kandy Korn, myself! Yummy!)

There is some excellent info (and brief reading) at the following link. I think it'll help ya'll decide what to do.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/3000/3119.html

Thank you for that link, Horseshoe! It was nice to learn that the smut was not a seed issue, and we plan to rotate crops *AND* do a deeper till next year (still have boulders out there... LOL). The corn stalks were pulled immediately after each harvest and destroyed before the spores spread (I think/hope). :)

We love fresh sweet corn too much to *NOT* plant again next year; in fact, we're already planning for more. The single ear per stalk, combined with the very late outbreak of corn smut, seems more and more like a hiccup based on the unseasonably cool and wet conditions we've had this year. All in all, we lost less than 10% of our viable ears to corn smut in the 36 holes -- and at nearly 100% germination and harvest for the 3 seeds per hole!!!

Life is good.

Donna

Great info Donna & Shoe~

I printed out the info at that sight for my corn book. Luckily, mine never looked as bad as their photo, I felt the ears every other day, and removed unevenly enlarged ones to check for smut.

I had searched high and low for info, got all kinds of lore instead. Then found in a Rodale book the low-down facts, and also read about how smut was/is used as an antibiotic. So I decided maybe I should look at the silver cloud instead of the smutty lining LOL

{{Edited to add, all four conditions above existed, and I though the alfalfa hay mulch was not the source of the fungus, I know it was high in nitrogen, so I will cut back on that a little next year, though I believe the benefits far outweighed the smut. Also, my corn was mature two weeks early, supposedly due to rain... so it is all gone now, sniff, I miss eating raw corn in the field whiile watching the glorious sunset...}}

I only planted one seed per hole, had four twenty foot rows, and had as many as six husks per plant. All in all, four smutty ears, and one smutty tassell. I was grateful that I had a small patch so I could check it everyday and remove the smut before it opened. I did also find one in my Golden Bantam patch as well, and it had opened.

We had the wettest June on record (supposedly) here in Texas, so I am grateful to have had only a little smut and blight (both kinds), and no mites. Most of these were planted under the moon sign of Leo, which is not good for disease resistance, but they were planted in Love by a visiting friend, and I would not have let her miss out on the garden therapy just because she came on a Leo day instead of Pisces. So I am very happy to have gotten almost 12 dozen edible ears from those 75+ plants.

My solution is to plant corn(and more of it) next year where the fall beans are this year, and double the size of my potato beds by planting them where the corn was. Potatos are compoletely IMMUNE to the smut. That outta teach those spores to mess with TEXAS lol.

I will also stick to my variety, Stowell's, as it is a late season heirloom, and everyone who tasted it loved it and wanted more. I had to limit everyone on what they could have, and just prmised I would plant more next year.

My big plans include 7 sections, each with seven 40 ft rows. Hope I can stay on top of that much! I will plant bush beans in between early, pole beans in between late, sunflowers on the east and west sides, marigolds on the north and south sides, and cucumbers and squash between the sunflower rows. Any other thoughts or ideas? Oh, and maybe tansy or wormwood around it too, and some spanish needles.

Still lovin' Dave's Garden,

cornius (aka Crazy for Corn Tamara)

This message was edited Aug 30, 2004 11:05 PM

Thought you folks might find the following precursor to gourmet restaurants' corn smut offerings interesting.

The Hidatsa way of cooking with Mapedi (corn smut) is described in the book, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden (1917), by Gilbert Wilson who wrote about Buffalo Bird's garden with the help of an interpreter. They only ate the type of mapedi that grew on parts of the corn ear, not the stalk. Buffalo Bird Woman says,

"We gathered the black masses and half boiled and dried them, still on the cob. When well dried, they were broken off the cob. These broken-off pieces we mixed with the dried, half-boiled green corn, and stored in the same sack with them.

"Mapedi was cooked by boiling with the half-boiled dried corn. We did not eat mapedi fresh from the garden, nor did we cook it separately. Mapedi, boiled with corn tasted good, not sweet, and not sour."

Buffalo Bird Woman's garden existed on a flood plain near of the upper Missouri River near Fort Berthold called "Like a Fish Hook", where Hidatsa, Mandan (only about 30 survivors) and Arikara eventually coalesced after being decimated by the 1837 smallpox epidemic. Today, the site of her garden is under water, as many dams along the Missouri have flooded much of the area along the river.

Thankx to DH for keeping facts straight.

How intriguing, bluespiral! I just did a Google search on the area and, as always, was amazed at the information available online. Thank you for the introduction to these tribes and this piece of history! :)

Yes, thank you!

I like learning more about how Indian tribes grew veggies, esp. corn. After I learned the medicinal properties of the smut (precursor to pennicillin), I decided not to dread it, but just accept it as part of Nature's precious cycle.

History is a great teacher!

Tamara, Tutti, and 'Shoe, I love the dialog on DG. 'course gardening is my favorite subject, so i'm just a little biased, here. Tutti, did you know that in a musical score "tutti" means "all at once"? heehee

Tamara, i'm a believer in allowing for what is not known, so when science poopoos astrology, I stay in the middle, waiting to see what comes up next. So, respectfully, I'm curious about moon signs being propitious or not propitious to disease resistance. Can you expand a little more on how this works?

Not at the moment, but I can recommend two good books, the first I have read and the second am currently reading:

Both by Louise Riotte. First, Planetary Planting, Second Astrological Gardening (much more 'scientific')

I usually find my books cheapest at http://www.alibris.com or
http://barnesandnoble.com, though now and then I find a great deal at http://www.amazon.com

When I have more time, we can discuss it, there may even be a forum here where you discuss books???

Tamara

BTW, though I got a lot of corn, the patch planted in Leo also got early AND late blight on the stalks, not serious, but I won't be selling the shucks. Has a little to do with extra moisture here this year. But truthfully, corn loves rain, and healthy corn shouldn't get every worm and every disease. Next year I will be doing more "experiments" about this...