Check these first
- Does it recover in the morning and evening? If so, the roots are struggling to take up water.
- Is the soil bone dry, or has it stayed soggy for days?
- Check the base of the stem and the roots for galls, brown streaks, or a rotten smell.
Most likely causes
From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.
Southern Blight
The stem rots at soil level and white silky mycelium spreads over the crown and the surrounding soil surface. Brown sclerotia the size of rapeseed then form and the plant wilts and dies rapidly.
General description; not specific to this plant.
How to identify and treat: Southern BlightRoot Rot
Fine roots rot brown to blackish brown, growth stops and the lower leaves yellow. The plant wilts easily in the daytime and eventually dies outright.
General description; not specific to this plant.
How to identify and treat: Root RotRoot-knot Nematode
The plant wilts in the daytime and does not recover with feeding or watering. Pull it up and the roots carry beaded chains of galls of varying size with few fine roots.
General description; not specific to this plant.
How to identify and treat: Root-knot NematodeOther possible causes
The three above are the causes on record for this symptom.
Other symptoms on this plant
What other growers did about it
A page like this one can tell you what sweet corn plant wilting is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.
Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.
- Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
- Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
- Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.
Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.