How to hand pollinate corn. If you have to.
Step One: catch a bunch of pollen from the tassel.
Mmm, pollen. You'll know it's time when the tassel opens up and has the dangley things (anthers), and you tap it gently, pollen visibly falls out.
I, and a bunch of other people, catch it in a sheet of folded paper, as you can see above.
This makes it easy to do Step Two: sprinkle the pollen on to some receptive silks:
They're ready for pollen as soon as you see the silks. You just kinda tap it on there and the corn does it's thing. I don't know exactly when they stop being receptive to pollen, but I'd bet that if they look browned and dried out it's a no go.
Why would someone want to do this? Well, there's two scenarios that I know of:
1. You don't have enough space to grow enough corn to ensure wind pollination is effective.
2. You are breeding corn and you want to be sure of which plants are pollinating which plants.
This does work, I've done it before, and fingers crossed the cobs will ripen and I'll get to show you all.
