Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

I find sweetcorn a git to grow, when really i think it should be quite easy! Last year we had enough for one small bite while ripping the plants out of the ground to compost. It went in very late as the first sowing was munched to hell by slugs.

This year i had a similar problem. 85% of the new seed i bought didn’t germinate, 5% was eaten by beasties, so the four plants i had left went in the ground.  These has grown nicely, and very tall. They are planted in the cucurbit bed with the courgettes and squashes, as the sweetcorn is tall, and the others grow low down. This is similar to the three sisters method of growing, but i don’t like to overload the beds too much.

The silky threads that grow out of the end of each corn have started to shrivel and die off, which indicates that they are ready to harvest, but upon further inspection inside, the kernels are not fully developed yet. I was hoping to poke them to find out if the juice inside the kernels was milky (under ripe) or creamy (ripe). I think i’ll leave it another week before checking again…we really do need a little sun to help them along.

Upon harvesting, we will have 6 cobs from 4 plants, which i don’t think is bad going. Next year, i’m going to make it my personal mission to plant out at least 50 plants. I think the propogators might need to be totally devoted to sweetcorn to keep them covered.