Growing Vegetables

How To Grow Sweetcorn

Growing sweetcorn at home is a rewarding experience. There is nothing like the sweet taste of freshly picked corn and it is surprisingly easy to grow sweetcorn when you know how.

Firstly you will need to allocate some space on your allotment or in your garden to grow your sweetcorn. This needs to be a square area. Sweetcorn is always planted in a square because it allows for proper pollination of the plants. The male flowers are found at the top of the sweetcorn and the square block formation allows for pollination of the female flowers lower down which produce the corn.

Sweetcorn grows best in free draining soil that will retain moisture. If you can plan in advance, then dig in plenty of well rotted manure in to your new sweetcorn bed. If you don’t have the time to do this, you can still prepare the bed in the spring by removing weeds and digging over the site. Make sure you remove any large stones before you level it roughly and then rake flat.

Seeds or Plants

You can buy ready seeds or pre-grown sweetcorn. It is up to you which you prefer – the ready made sweetcorn does save some time and can mean an earlier crop. However, you have a lot less choice in the varieties available to you with the per-grown plants. If you want to grow a heritage or more unusual crop then you will have to start from seed.

Sowing In To Pots

You can start growing sweetcorn in pots in April. Fill a 7.5cm pot with a good quality compost and then make a 2.5cm deep hole in the top with a pencil or dibber. Drop to seeds in to the hole, cover and water. Place in a warm, light position, such as a windowsill to germinate.

When the seedlings reach around 2cm in height, remove the smallest one and put the plants in a shady place outside where they can toughen up a bit before you plant them out.

Planting Out

Before you plant out your sweetcorn, rake in some general fertiliser to your sweetcorn plot 2 or 3 weeks before you plant or sow your sweetcorn.

You want to set your sweetcorn plants around 35cm between plants and around 60cm between rows, forming a block. The block can be as large as you want it to be, depending on how many plants you are going to plant.

Sowing Direct To Soil

You can sow direct in to the soil instead of starting the plants off in pots. Plant the seeds in 2.5cm deep holes in late spring or early summer. Remember to sow two seeds every 35cm with 60 between the rows. Cover and water. When the seedlings reach 2cm tall then remove the weakest plant.

If it the weather is cool then you may want to protect the sweetcorn with fleece, held down with stones.

Making The Most Of Your Space

Sweetcorn has a relatively long growing season and does take a lot of space, which puts off a lot of allotment gardeners from growing it. However, the space where you are growing your sweetcorn doesn’t have to be just dedicated to your sweetcorn, you can grow other plants there too.

You can plant faster growing crops in between the sweetcorn to maximize the usage of the space. Growing lettuce, spring onions and radishes works very well with sweetcorn. These grow quickly whilst the sweetcorn is small and then as the corn grows bigger, you harvest the faster growing plants and make the most of that block of earth!

Harvesting Sweetcorn

Your sweetcorn will be ready when the silky tassels on the end of each cob has turned brown. You can be sure by carefully peeling back the leaves surrounding the cob and pinching a kernel. You are looking for milky juice, which means they are ready.

Then just twist the cob to remove it from the plant. You can remove one cob at a time from the plants and then remove the excess leaves from the cob and put in your compost heap before taking it home.

Storing Sweetcorn

It is better to leave the cobs on the plant until you are ready to use them, but you can store them at home. Leave the sweetcorn in the husks (leaves) and store in the crisper drawer of your fridge. Remember that sweetcorn doesn’t store well and loses its sweetness over time, so realistically you can only store them for a couple of days.

You can freeze the corn on the cobs by removing the husks and silk and then blanching the ears of corn in boiling water for 7 to 11 minutes. Drain them and plunge them in to cold water to stop the cooking. Dry them off and drain them as best you can then put them in freezer safe bags. Remove as much as as possible (vacuum sealers are useful here) and put in your freezer where they will keep for up to a year.

It is possible to freeze the kernels of the corn instead by removing the husks and then using a knife to remove the kernels. In most cases you are only going to get about three quarters of the total depth of the kernel. Blanch the kernels in boiling water for 5 minutes then drain and place in cold water. Dry and place in freezer safe bags, removing as much air as you can. Typically these will be good for around 3 months.

Sweetcorn is fun to grow and homegrown sweetcorn has a delicious sweet flavour that is heavenly. My kids won’t eat corn on the cob normally, but I couldn’t stop them eating the ones I’d grown on the allotment. It will be repeated next year in a larger area!

Vegetable Gardening

Vegetable gardening has lately become just as popular as going to the grocery store fore produce. Vegetable gardening can produce vegetable that are usually cheaper than store bought, and vegetables from a home vegetable garden definitely taste better by far. Vegetable gardening is no different than growing herbs or flowers and if the proper steps are taken and the plants are give the proper care they will flourish and produce very tasty vegetables.

First you must decide what size of garden you wish to plant and then select a place for it; somewhere that has good drainage, good air flow, and good, deep soil. It also needs to be able to get as much sunlight as possible. Because vegetable gardens have such tasty rewards, many animals, such as dogs, rabbits, deer, and many others will try and get to your veggies. One way to prevent this is to surround your garden with a fence, or put out a trap to catch mice, moles, and other animals.

Before planting, the soil must be properly prepared. Good soil for vegetable gardening is achieved by cultivation and the application of organic materials. The soil must be tilled (plowed) to control weeds and mix mulch into the soil. If you have a small garden, spading could be a better bet than plowing. Mulching is also a vital part of soil preparation. Organic matter added to the soil releases nitrogen, minerals, and other nutrients plants need to thrive. The most popular and best type of mulch you can use is compost. While the kind and amount of fertilizer used depends on the soil and types of plants, there are some plants that have specific needs; leafy plants, like cabbage, spinach, and lettuce usually grow better with more nitrogen, while root crops like potatoes, beets, turnips, and carrots require more potash. Tomatoes and beans use less fertilizer, while plants like onions, celery, and potatoes need a larger amount.

One thing that is vitally important in vegetable gardening is the garden arrangement. There is no single plan that will work for every garden due to varying conditions. One popular way to arrange a vegetable garden is to plant vegetables needing only limited space together, such as radishes, lettuce, beets, and spinach, and those that require more room together, such as corn, pumpkins, and potatoes. Try and plant tall growing plants towards the back of the garden and shorter ones in the front so that their sunlight does not get blocked.

When you are finally ready to begin planting your vegetable garden, make sure and plant at the right time of year. If you are dying to get an early start, you may want begin your garden inside in a hotbed and then transplant when the weather permits. After you are finished planting, make sure your vegetables receive the appropriate amount of water, which depends on the type of plant. Most plants will need the equivalent to about an inch of water per week.

Weeds must be controlled in vegetable gardening because they will take up water, light, and nutrients meant for the vegetables and they often bring disease and insects to the garden. You can get rid of weeds by cultivation or mulching. To protect against disease and insects you can buy seeds that are disease resistant or use controlled chemicals.

Vegetable gardening is many people’s favorite form of gardening because you can actually taste the fruits of your labor. Vegetable gardening is not that expensive to start and the taste of home grown veggies definitely beat out that of supermarket vegetables. Your vegetable gardening days will be full of produce if you take the proper precautions when planting and continue maintenance of your garden.