Keeping it sweet
Bob explains why now is the best time to sow sweetcorn
DO you love sweetcorn – and if so, have you tried growing it? Well, right now is your best opportunity for a brilliant crop. You see, we want our cobs to swell and ripen rapidly, becoming plump, succulent and sweet. Such vigorous growth requires strong bright sunshine – something too often in short supply in Blighty, even in the height of summer. So if we want brilliant cobs, they need to ripen during July or August.
Before they can flower, though, sweetcorn plants need to produce a set number of leaves. This used to take much longer with older varieties that would often not ripen until too late. So breeders worked at reducing that time to 90 days or so, which is effectively three months. However, that’s only at best, because in poor sunless summers they can take longer.
Anyway, three months before July or August means crops need to be sown in April or May. To add to the difficulty, sweetcorn much prefers to be sown in situ – where it’s to spend its entire life – because it resents being pot-grown and planted out. And although you can start sowing from mid-April, that’s really only with the help of cloches – because otherwise it’s risky, especially on cold, wet sites. Fortunately, by now the soil is warmer, and hard frosts and harsh winds are less likely, so sweetcorn will germinate and grow away rapidly to ripen when the sun will still be strong. Before you sow, though, it pays to enrich your soil first. Sweetcorn loves phosphates, so add some bone meal or equivalent to the patch (native Americans would sow several plants in a clump on a mound covering fish waste.) Sow sweetcorn in a block (not in rows) as this helps pollination, but don’t crowd them. The greater the spacing, the larger the plants and the better your crop.
“Before you sow, it pays to enrich your soil”