Grow The Best Corn Country Wisdom Bulletins A – 68 – Nancy Bubel

If you want to plant corn next year from seed you save this year (more about that on page 25), the plants from which you save seeds should be pollinated only by their own variety, or the next crop will not come true. If you want to maintain a strain of Golden Bantam, then the seed you save must be pollinated only by Golden Bantam corn plants. So you will have to plan your planting schedule so that no other corn crop within 500 to 1300 feet is in tassel at the same time as your seed crop.

You can guarantee this by planting early corn next to late corn, for example, because the early corn will have shed its pollen by the time the late corn is in tassel. There should be at least two weeks difference between maturity dates of different varieties to eliminate all chance of cross-pollination. Plants raised for seed must be more strictly isolated from other tasseling varieties than those raised for food. The reason for this is that a few odd kernels on a cob may not affect its eating quality, but if you plant them, these kernels (seeds) will not grow into the kind of corn you are aiming for.

Super-Sweet Corn. Super-sweet corn (except for the everlasting heritage varieties) loses sweetness when pollinated by other varieties, even other kinds of sweet corn. Super-sweet varieties that are adversely affected by cross-pollination must be planted 350 to 500 feet away from any other tasseling corn. Even at this distance, an occasional odd kernel may develop from alien pollen, but there should be too few of these to affect quality.

OceanofPDF.com Care of the Growing Crop Care during the growing season should help the plants to make the most of their natural advantage of efficient metabolism. Since corn needs all the light it can get, you will want to avoid planting other tall plants nearby that might shade the young corn plants on their way up. And you will want to make sure that each plant has every opportunity to make good use of the rich soil you have provided.

Thin the seedlings to their proper spacing — eight to twelve inches apart. Crowded corn plants shade each other and compete for soil nutrients. Leave the tillers (those extra stalks growing from the base of the plant) on the plant. Although their function is not completely understood, it is generally agreed that corn grows better if the tillers are not removed.

Corn is a New World plant, native to parts of Mexico and Central and South America. When Columbus landed in the New World in 1492, native American Indians had been growing popcorn, sweet corn, dent corn, and flint corn for hundreds of years. They had developed these distinct varieties by repeatedly selecting the best ears of each type and saving and planting the seed. Sweet corn is a gardener’s vegetable, one of the most eagerly awaited summer crops.

By growing your own, you can have it at its best: sweet, tender, juicy kernels, five minutes from the patch. Fresh sweet corn is so good that it needs no sauces or fancy recipes; simply steam and serve. Many gardeners like to eat raw corn while husking it. Corn is a vigorous plant that responds to generous fertilizing, so it is satisfying to grow. Corn’s best features are its sweet, delicate flavor (sweet corn) and its versatility (popcorn, flint, and dent corn).

On the negative side, corn takes more growing space than many other vegetables, uses up a lot of soil nitrogen, and — if grown in large plots — exposes the soil to erosion. There are ways of getting around these difficulties, though, as we will show you in this bulletin. OceanofPDF.com Kinds of Corn You Can Grow Usually, selecting a vegetable variety to grow is a pretty easy choice — mainly because you do not have that many varieties to choose from.

But if you have ever counted the varieties of corn offered in most seed catalogs, you know that selecting a variety of corn to grow involves considering a lot of different factors. (On the last pages of this bulletin there are forty-three recommended varieties — and that’s just a sampling of what is available!) To select a variety of corn to grow, first decide whether you want to grow sweet corn, popcorn, flint corn, dent corn, flour corn, super-sweet corn, or high-lysine corn.

Then you will want to choose between hybrid and open- pollinated varieties. Types of Corn Let’s consider, first, the characteristics of each of the different kinds of corn you might want to grow, again with a bow to the native Americans, who, without tools, or books, or an understanding of the principles of botany, managed to divide the corn family into five distinct groups: sweet corn, popcorn, flint corn, dent corn, and flour corn.

Recently, plant breeders have given us new types of corn to consider, including super-sweet varieties and high-lysine corn. Sweet Corn.

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