I grew some Early Sunglow Hybrids early summer and harvested them awhile back with some pretty nice cobs for a first time corn grower. I live in Texas where its still pretty hot throughout fall, so in August I planted some more corn again since they grew fast. A week ago I found two caterpillars on the corn leaves and got rid of them quickly... but they seemed to have done some damage on a lot of the corn leaves. Now most all my corn plants look like this, and I had to put sticks because they keep falling down. I'm guessing they won't be able to grow much more at this point but I have no idea what happened. I tended to them just like I tended to the first batch I had and have never seen this before. Can little caterpillars really have caused this much destruction?

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The middle where new leaves usually grown from and the tassel comes out are just.. crisp and yellow and look bad =/ Can anyone tell me what happened so next year I will be more prepared what to do and possibly prevent?