Baby Corn

For four years I attempted to grow sweet corn. The first year it grew about three feet tall and died; the second year it grew to about four feet tall and sprouted three-inch ears; the third year it didn't even bother to come up and the fourth year I had four-inch, bug infested ears. So I gave up on sweet corn, content to buy it at the corn stand in Coralville. But this year Art brought home some sweet corn seeds and begged me to plant them and so far it looks pretty good. Except for this:

This is just one plant out of a row and a half of plants, so I'm not getting too upset about it...yet. This is a pencil-sized ear of corn, already with tassle. Really?! Are you kidding me? I can almost taste defeat.

But like I said, It's only the one plant...so far.

My black beans are doing really well, but I noticed that they have some leaders coming off of them, like they are supposed to have some sort of support (i.e. a bean pole). The package said nothing of this and I'm finding more and more seed packages give very few instructions on how to grow said seeds. I bought the seeds on the internet (amazon, if you can believe it- really good resource for random seeds you can't find anywhere else!) and never in the description did it say that it was a climbing bean. Whatever. It's not a big deal. Art helped me put some hog panels against them so they now have something to grow on. It's not pretty, but it'll work. He did make the comment about how I didn't know that these would be climbers, as green beans are usually climbers. I had to remind him that I have always grown bush beans and never climbers so he can just keep pounding that post in and keep his opinions to himself.