How corny

From the Queens Gazette:

Corn is growing in leaps and bounds on a sidewalk in the Dutch Kills community in Long Island City. The crop is blooming beneath some newly planted city street trees on a stretch of grass along 30th Street between 39th and 40th Avenues – beating the odds by having survived the blistering July heat wave. If you look closely, you can see almost a dozen small ears of corn among the stalks – yet another sign of growth in the community that proudly displays a stone from a local gristmill, dated to the early 1600s at its “front doorstep”, at Queens Plaza.

Who planted corn in a city tree pit and how long do you think that will last, especially now that it's been spotlighted in the newspaper?