Growing your own sweetcorn is an exciting gardening experience. It begins with planting that first golden kernel into the warm earth just before the summer sun calls forth the bloom of fruit trees and flowers. For many backyard gardeners, growing sweetcorn is a celebration of life. With a few tips, you can grow your own sweetcorn and enjoy the harvest by roasting, boiling, or even as corn meal mush.
Corn is an essential part of the world's diet and is grown around the world, although not every corn plant shares the robustness or flavor of home grown sweetcorn. If you are planning on planting a garden with a crown of corn stalks, you might enjoy these few tips, based upon personal organic gardening experience, for a successful crop of delicious sweetcorn.
Planting sweetcorn
Sweetcorn should be planted in fertile, medium loam soil when the soil temperature has warmed to around 68 degrees F. If the soil is too cold, or too damp, the seed will rot. An ideal location is on well drained, sunny hillside that hasn't been tilled for some time. Corn is a hardy plant that will survive in places where other garden variety plants won't, as long as the soil is rich and fertile.
The best time to plant is when the wild cherry and wild plums are in bloom, on or before the full moon in Spring. When planting, be careful to make a hole to 1 inch deep, not too shallow or the first rain will float the seeds to the surface and the birds will eat it. If planting in a row, holes should be at least 6 inches apart, which will be thinned to 12 inches apart when the sprouts appear.
How many rows you plant depends upon how much corn you wish to harvest over the summer. Organic farmers might tell you that a good start would be to plant four rows, approximately 30 - 36 inches apart. Typically, a single stalk of corn will produce at least two ears, so you can calculate how long and how many rows you need to plant within the amount of garden space available.
Corn pollen drops from the tassels to the leaves below, so corn grows best when the plants are grown in a triangle pattern. Ideally, the corn's leaves will be touching when fully grown. When planting in rows, you should consider putting on one row every week in the spring, May-June (April-May in warmer climates) in order to increase the number of weeks that corn is ripening in August. Sweetcorn can also be planted in hills or mounds, spaced around a foot apart with three seeds to a hill.
If you're planting white corn, remember that pollen is heavy and does not travel far by wind. Hills or woods are a barrier to pollination. Never leave any extra seeds on the ground, as crows will soon appear and feast on your newly planted seeds.
Fertilizing
Add charcoal and ashes to the soil with care. Ashes should be used in small amounts, as it raises the pH of the soil and will increase its alkalinity. Wood ashes are said to eat into the insect crawlers' shells, feet and bellies. Lime Stones are believed to be useful in providing lime and essential nutrient to the soil and prevent soil erosion.
When the corn sprouts reach a height of 6" - 8" break the soil crust around the sprout and thin if necessary. Add compost or mulch to the soil if it is becoming nutrient exhausted.
Harvesting sweetcorn
Corn reaches its prime for harvesting around two weeks after the corn silk can be seen. During the last days of August the corn will reach "milk state", which lasts seven to ten days during which time the tassels will turn brown. This is the time that the birds are going to frequent the garden dinner table if they can.
You can tell if an ear of corn is ripe by peeling back the husk just enough to see the top two inches of the kernels. If a kernel splits when you press it with your fingernail and the juice is milky, it is ripe. Now is the time to start picking and enjoying a feast. On the other hand, if the juice is watery, just put the husk back in place and give it a few more days to complete ripening. You'll be able to tell if the corn is overripe if the juice is gooey, which means that the corn kernels are becoming loaded with starches.
Ripe sweetcorn husks should be moist and not dried out, bright green with a few brown tassels on top. Husks are nature's own freshness wrapper, so don't remove the husks until you're ready to cook. The best time to pick sweetcorn is always late in the afternoon, when the sugar is concentrated in the kernels.
Freshly picked sweetcorn has the best flavor, and picking a batch of corn and eating it the same day is a great experience. Once you've removed the husks, you can easily remove the silk threads by wiping the corn lengthwise with a damp cloth or paper towel. Get them into boiling unsalted water as quickly as you can for the best, freshest flavor. Some folks like to add a couple tablespoon of sugar or sweet milk to the water in order to add a little extra flavor.