Here’s the current status of my home sweet corn patch, for your amusement.
The early planting is entirely GTS and only 1/3 the size of normal, in order to leave access for the painters (who are delayed 6 weeks from their planned arrival) to paint the shed when they paint the house.
The second planting will full-sized and a mix of the remaining GTS seed and leftover seeds from four open pollinated varieties that we have liked in the past.
We use a no-dig-esque management strategy, which means adding a half inch to inch of compost every time we put something in. There seem to be more viable seeds in the compost than typical this year, which means the corn patch is also home to a tomato (that looks to be struggling to get enough light), a tomatillo (keeping up with the corn to get plenty of sun), a bean (climbing the corn), a cowpea (perfectly happy in the middle of everything), and a couple of squashes. I’m most curious about the bushy, upright squash on the edge of the patch. I suspect it could be from the discarded floater seeds from the Homs Kousa that we let go to seed in an effort to cross with Romanesco. I’ll know more once it sets fruit. The other is likely a moschata based on the leaves.
Did I mention that the corn is seeded at 8” spacing each way, and there are only a few “blanks”, so there really isn’t space for everything else?
A serious question: how do you taste the sweet corn to know which cobs to leave to finish maturing seed? Hope for enough tillering to get a second or third ear on the plant? Partially unwrap and lop off 2/3 of the ear to eat?
When I taste test sweet corn just open the ear at the top and break off a few mature kernals and taste while in the milk stage…or wait until they dry up, fully mature and remove dried kernals from the cob. Grind up to make polenta or grits. I keep different dried corn inside different glass jars until all has been tasted. If your growing sweetcorn, then taste when in the milk stage. Flour and grits types, taste a sample when dried.
What type of corn did you grow?
The first ear of corn was ready today (I would have to pull out the book to remember when I planted - I think the second half of March). It was a smaller ear than my preference, and the plant didn’t tiller to make up for it, and it doesn’t have the most diverse pollination of the patch (by way of being a few days to a week ahead of its neighbors). But it tasted so good when I sampled one kernel that I got out a knife and left the bottom inch to mature for the seed box, just in case everything else is a disaster.
The entirety of planting 1 is either eaten or or maturing seed. There’s 6 bottoms of ears saving for seed (5 on the plants and one was brought to me by a 3 year old). Planting 2 goes in the ground tomorrow as a mix of the remaining GTS packet, Desert White Sweet, and a few other scraps in the seed box.
All the seed from the first planting in the colander to finish drying. The second planting has recovered from being run over by a child’s toy lawn mower when it was about 6 inches high.
Once fully matured, the two white-eared plants had maybe 5% colored kernels on them, so there was some crossing from other neighbors.
