A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Help somethings eating my corn...

I just replanted my corn this week and am already noticing broken corn seed on top of the row. There are also a few holes in the rows where I'm thinking maybe birds are pecking at the seeds and eating them. Does anyone know or have any experience with this? With my first patch of corn I had lots of sea gulls swarming around my garden. But with this new patch I rarely see any. What could it be.

Looking online I found info about a corn beetle that is very small and will damage the plant right before your eyes because the bug is so little you can't see it. They eat the leaves evidentially. But check this out. The corn sap beetle can eat into the kernels I think.

http://www.idlab.ento.vt.edu/IDLab/vegpests/vegfs/cornsapbeetle.html



I looked for an organic way to control them but couldn't find one.

Thanks Sheri, but this is for when the plants are already growing with leaves and all. But my corn have basically been stolen out of the ground before they were able to sprout. I think it was birds because there are holes in the ground right where I planted the seeds and quite often I can see broken seed right beside the holes.

Today I have a bit of good news, I'm seeing a few corn sprouting in the rows. I'm hoping the birds or whatever is doing this had their fill and will let the rest go.

It may be small rodents doing their thing at night. I see this a lot in my garden.

Crows are known to pluck sprouting corn out of the ground to get to the seed. But you said they were leaving the seed behind so I don't think it's crows. I have a big problem every spring with birds plucking young seedlings up and using them as nesting material. I've caught them in the act several times. They sometimes pluck just a few leaves, or just the bud, and sometimes the whole plant. The parts they pluck usually disappear but sometimes they abandon the piece they plucked or give up before they tear the piece completely off. They wiped my first tomatoes out, damaged many of the cold crop seedlings, and got some corn. The problem seems to go away when they finish their nest building cycle.