Wikipedia confirms, assuming no one is pulling its leg.
Maize has short-day photoperiodism, meaning that it requires nights of a certain length to flower. Flowering further requires enough warm days above 10 °C (50 °F). The control of flowering is set genetically; the physiological mechanism involves the phytochrome system. Tropical cultivars can be problematic if grown in higher latitudes, as the longer days can make the plants grow tall instead of setting seed before winter comes. On the other hand, growing tall rapidly could be convenient for producing biofuel.
Important things are covered above, especially wind pollination. Corn can be planted somewhat densely and is relatively easy to grow. But don’t expect a huge crop, it’s one of the things that remains cheap at the grocery store. If you plant at the same time, keep an eye on the silk, when it starts to brown it’s close to ready, pick a sacrificial cob or open carefully, and if a kernel secretes a sort of milky liquid when pricked it’s ready, and the other cobs are probably ready too. I leave the plants standing over winter and pull the next year. I haven’t messed too much with “three sisters” planting because I can’t grow squash well, but beans go nearby and can sometimes use corn for support.
When the field is first plowed, thousands of rocks are brought to the surface that would damage the cultivating equipment, so the farmer will drive along the windrows with a sledge behind his tractor or a scoop mounted at its front while the kids will “pick rock,” large and small and put them in the receptacle.
When a field is left fallow for the season, wild mustard will sprout that would spoil the hay. Kids will go through the field and pull it out, though the roots offer stubborn resistance.
“Knee high by the Forther July” is an old belief, and soon thereafter, when the Midwest becomes a giant steam room, kids will go through the corn cutting off the flowering tassels on the top of each ear, so that the growth energy is concentrated down in the ear. Most of the tassels are above shoulder level, and so each nigh its difficult to raise one’s arms.
A lot of farms are corn/dairy combined concerns, but the OP didn’t ask about any of that other shit. Overall… it’s character-building.
My wife’s family (on her father’s side) are farmers in central Illinois. She spent several summers as a kid/teenager down there, and detasseling corn was one of the jobs she was given: hot, sweaty, dirty, tiring work.
Northwest Illinois & southwest Wisconsin in the 1970’s Lucky those who’ve never picked rock. I realize technology has replaced this chore.
I do didn’t farm with horses, but I worked for old guys who had. Nubs for fingers: those horses didn’t have E-stops on them when they were being chained.
Lots of glacial till. Great soil but definitely rocky.
Further southwest, where I’ve watched farming (and even participated in it a little), it’s just topsoil over clay, and the nearest rock is probably bedrock.
Black as coal and it smelled wonderful when freshly tilled. There was a line in that movie Ride With the Devil where one of the Confederates father had traveled to Wisconsin: “dirt so rich you could eat it like pork.”
I doubt many sweet corn growers, whether for home or market are settling for varieties that only produce a single ear per stalk. Even early types mostly give two or more ears. Example:
Some grow heirloom colored kernel types such as Bloody Butcher for decoration, while corn useful for grinding to make flour is another specialty. Field (non-sweet) corn is preferred by a few people for roasting, with lime and salt added.
The genetics of sweet corn has gotten complicated.
Typically, a grain elevator is a larger, third-party facility where farmers (plural) take their grain (corn, soybeans, wheat) to be formally weighed, measured for moisture content, and stored (along with the harvest from other farmers) as part of the process of transferring it to a grain processor. The collected grain would eventually be shipped (by train or truck) to a processing plant. A particular elevator might be owned by the local farmers as a co-op, or it might be owned by one of the big processors (ADM, Cargill, etc.).
Grain elevators:
A grain bin is smaller, and would be where a farmer would temporarily store their harvested grain - probably on their own property - prior to transporting it to the local elevator.
This map shows the extent of the ice sheets and glacial advances in the prehistoric Midwest. Central Kansas was never glaciated in that era, while northwestern Illinois and some of southwestern Wisconsin (as mentioned by @Slithy_Tove ) were underneath glaciers several times.
(Also, note the gray “driftless area” in southwestern Wisconsin. The topography there looks completely different from the rest of the state, because it didn’t get flattened repeatedly by glaciers.)
That’s where I grew up: the driftless area where the glaciers collided and left an open zone where they crumpled up the land. So hilly the dairy farmers there used milking cans with flat sides because if they tipped over and started rolling they’d never see them again
Kansas doesn’t have a bunch of little rocks under the surface. It has a slab of limestone the size of the Mediterranean Sea that could be chopped up and used for building
