When my ambrosia corn was starting to show ears, many of them had the leaves have pulled away & were exposed even though they are now yet ripe. I just left it alone & did nothing to it.

{{gwi:52632}}

Today, some of the ears looked ripe & were harvested. Not only did some of my corn ears look weird while they were growing, the looked VERY weird after they were picked. It's almost as if a second "branch" was growing next to the ear. This happened with about 1/3 of all the corn ears. I did notice that these were all the second or third ear on each stalk. The first ear on the stalk all look fine. I've grown Ambrosia corn before and never had this problem.

{{gwi:52633}}

Then my hubby finally confessed. I was out of town for a few weeks when the corn was about 2' high. At that point, it had not yet developed tassels. My DH was watching over it & one day he say a "bug." So he went to one of the big box stores and got an insecticide. He sprayed the corn, including down the top where it was growing. According to DH, a few days later, the top growing point started turning brown & dying. That's when the corn started putting out side shoots. By the time I returned, He had removed all the dead growth & "neglected" to tell me. I'm wondering if the production side shoots was the corn's attempt to continue growing.