Black mold blots in jar ferment

[lizzieb]

Last weekend I put up a small amount of corn kernels with tons of garlic in a small muslin bag in a half gallon jar. At the same time I put up pickles, also in half gallon glass jars; all these jars are next to each other on the counter covered with a cloth.

I've been trying to find a weight for these jar ferments which won't react or stick out above the brine (last year I used rocks but some reacted and I got Mineral Corn) and this time around I used a small glass baby food jar which works but which it means there's a lot of brine space above the corn

(I saw that someone had just posted about glass weights which seem brilliant and which I've ordered but in the meantime this is my unsatisfactory solution)

The corn has never developed what I think of as that active-looking puckery white scum; after a few days I got small blots of floating fuzzy mold, black and pinkish, as well as smaller dots of floating less fuzzy greenish mold. I've been skimming them, and they've been returning. There's some activity in the corn itself, bubbles, but not a ton.

Meanwhile the pickles have just kicked into puckery scum mode.

Should I throw the corn out? Was there too little corn for the amount of brine? Any thoughts most welcome...