What type of soil you have?

sandy clay soil

I have panted that before and the "same" thing from henry fields this year and it is doing great. I have a clay soil and water a bunch. I planted early may and some are starting to get the tassels (or what ever they are called) on top.

Never grew that but I notice the field corn here is always way faster and taller than my sweet corn
Have you sidedressed with nitrogen 2 feet high doesn't sound to bad to me

nor me Mrs 6inches!!! and I am not referring to hubby!!! sorry crude! but my corn is only 6 inches planted April, local corn available for 12 for $2 so I will not be doing that again next year, just not worth the hassel, but this year was about experimenting not yields, I will offer the seed on the seed exchange because it was "mini mira??" or something like that? soon, so folks can try it next year.
I say soon, because if I succeed, and it is as nice as the write up maybe I will give it another go, but!! I don't actually like really sweet stuff so the likely hood is that it will end up there.
good luck

This is the hardest corn to grow, but well worth the effort if you can, this year I had to plant it 3 times-the first 1 1/2 plantings would not even germinate. I thought I planted too deep,(2nd knuckle depth) planted some shallow and some nighttime rodents dug up the kernels and feasted, it seems to like hot soil for germination. what little bit I did get I just tried today, 8/22/09. Almost as good as last years crop, but was partially cross pollinated with another Gurney sh2 called Early extra sweet? Pretty sure that was the name if I remember correctly, of which,now get this! gave me a near 100 percent! germination in the same soil that the Gotta have would not grow in. Being an sh2 type one could only imagine the anticipation with the spectacular ease of growth it was showing. I thought I found the ultimate corn, but I didn't, The downside to the Early Extra was the lack of flavor compared to the "Gotta", also did not develop flavor until fully mature-still retained most of its tenderness but no where near as sweet-had much more of a traditional sweet corn flavor, hard to believe it is a sh2 varietal.
Just can't figure out the secret to the Gotta have it yet. Germination has been my biggest problem. my plants are around 6-7 feet tall and have 2 ears each, but the poor germination has hurt proper pollination, the ears seem a little too slender, most plants are 2-3 feet apart loosely germinated/dispersed in a 20 foot square. They were originally planted at 2 inch spacing and were to be thinned, but like I stated, only about 5% ever even broke through the soil. I easily planted around 750 seeds and only have about 35 plants to show for it. I waited till around June 2nd for the best results, as my mid May crop was a 99% failure. As too the 3rd mid June planting was poor, but suffered mice/vole attacks as was planted shallower out of frustration on how to get it too grow. (1 knuckle deep) lack of rainfall did not help much either-was very dry here, tried to water 3 times a week.
I did have similar trouble in 2008, 2 plantings with a little better germination. All I can say is Gotta Have It becomes an obsession if you can get it to grow, Its so sweet we only brag about it to other gardeners, but hoard what little we can grow to ourselves. My garden is 20 miles SW of Pittsburgh Pa. Any help on this Varietal would be greatly appreciated.

Well if there was a sh2 that I had bad germination problems with I'd try the transplant route. Temperature and moisture will be easily controlled as will be stand density and I wouldn't be the first one to have tried it. It would be a big paiin in the rear to plant all those transplants however.

I've elected to go the TP route with onions to get better stands and a better selection of cultivars to plant. It is a pain planting all those little buggers in the cold and wind in usually damp/wet spring soil but the results are well worth it.

Michael

Thanx Michael, am considering starting plants in peat pots next spring in a mini green house with a starter soil mix.

Rimrox: You are welcome. If you go the plug tray route, which I recommend, do not let them become root bound. There can be a small time window in plug trays between not enough rootball to stay intact during transplanting (root gets damaged) and too rootbound (doesn't grow out of the condition). Corn was never bred to be container grown early in it's life. I would try it on a limited basis for a year or 2 not putting all my eggs in one basket so to speak. Sounds like a lot of peat pots!

Michael

I've not tried that variety, but we planted Sugar Pearl from Park Seed this year and are absolutely blown away by how wonderful it is. Extremely tasty and very prolific. We had just about given up trying to grown corn, seems like no matter what kind we grew it didn't do well, but this is truly a winner that we will grow every year. We thought that these would be stunted, too, given the cool wet weather but it's a real trooper. We did side dress it with blood meal, and maybe that's part of the reason it did better than anything in previous years? I do highly recommend the Sugar Pearl, especially if you like really sweet corn.
Edie