Grow Your Own Magazine

Does it need staking or will it be OK in a bunch?
How do you plant it?
What variety should I choose?

Thanks for any help. My mum wanted some so I'm giving it a try.

I have grown Swift and Lark with great success for the past few years. Any sugar enhanced variety will give you a worthwhile crop although there are plenty of others to choose from.

The plants should be planted individually in blocks with anywhere between
12" and 18" between plants and rows. They will not need staking at all but will need lots of water.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

I grow it in the greenhouse until it is about 6" tall, and then plant out.
In blocks with each plant about 9" apart.
I have never needed to stake, and have always had marvellous crops

Thanks Piglet and Hugh... It's a first for me!
I'll try to use both methods, but this year we have building work so it may be hard to find a place for my plastic greenhouses.
I'll also track down some Swift and Lark

I grew swift for the first time last year and did a grid of plants 12 inches apart. The plot we have was fairly exposed and i did have to steke one or two out of the whole pack.One thing to remember is that if you do try a crop not to get differing varieties as some are sweet and others are supersweet. The two types counteract each other and will not produce anything.Stick with one variety and you will be enjoying delicious corn on the cob next autumn. I hope that this helps

Invaluable advice... Thankyou.
So they do not cross pollinate?

I had to stake all of mine but I do live in a wind tunnel(river valley)as they got flattened.You may already know this but they are planted in blocks because they are wind polinated.

One of the guys at our lotties puts windbreaks up on the windward side to give them a bit of protection. The bonny striped kind used on the beach( or is that just on North East beaches???)

I myself don't bother, and I don't stake either, and I had really good sweetcorn this year which I just sowed direct in the soil.

Best eaten raw straight from the plant!!! Mmmm I can taste it now! Yum Yum!

I have been told you can use the sweetcorn for to support climbing French Beans and in return the legumes fixate nitrogen in the soil which feeds the sweetcorn! Might give that a try this year!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Agree with the rest of the bunch!..One variety and block plant....

Has anyone tried the strawberry sweetcorn variety which is used for popping? Seen it in the T and M seed catalogue.
I also grew corn last year. Did not stake it and it stood up fine. Sweetcorn is best sown in pots and then planted out. When planting out plant it deeper than it was in the pot to help anchor it in. The roots grow very close to the surface and therefore care is needed when weeding or hoeing. I am underplanting with courgette this year to prevent weed growth.

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Snadger, sounds like agreat plan to companion plant beans with corn... would you space the corn out wider to give the beans room? and on an equal ratio?

thanks for your continual advice for newbies such as meself, stumbling half - blind (drunk) down the lottie path!

I was going to plant one patch of ordinary sweetcorn and one of the baby version. My kids like both. From what has been said about cross pollination, would this be a bad idea then?
Jools

This works graet Snadger, 1 bean plant to each corn plant and if you plant a courgette plants well spaced in the space between the rows, the leaves will protect the courgettes. All the foalige will proctect the soil and keep the mositure in, as well getting a large supply of lovely veg from the same space.

I did this last year had a good crop of beans, corn and corgettes. This tecnique is from the american indians they call it 'Three sisters'.

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Denise xox

Learn from the mistakes of others because you'll never live long enough to make them all yourself.
-- Alfred E. Neumann
http://irchesterplot.blogspot.com

Denise I keep reading about the Three Sisters method of planting but my courgette plants grow huge and certainly wouldn't fit between the sweetcorn plants. What variety of courgettes do you grow and what are the spacings between the sweetcorn plants?

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I had two beds 5' wide by 22 ft long planted with sweetcorn and I interplanted this with my squash and crown prince pumpkins. This worked incredibly well as the pumpkins and squash plants were a great weed suppressing mulch and added to the yield of each bed.

I never planted beans with them however but will try a few this season. Would I be correct in thinking that the beans need to be a dwarf variety or climbers but planted a while after the corn to prevent them from getting too far ahead of the corn.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

I only grew two plants of sweetcorn last year (in the polytunnel) but they were a great success, so am going for a big block in the ptunnel this year. I will have to underplant otherwise I lose such a large space, so interested in the courgettes, but had thought about lettuce. Is this a good idea? Don't know why I thought of that, perhaps I read it somewhere.
Any other ideas for underplanting?

My sweetcorn was rather sad and unsuccessful last year (due to lack of time to water and plant out - plus the ground was like concrete), but i underplanted with lettuce and it worked fine, in fact the lettuce thrived, while my sweetcorn never really got off the ground!

2 years ago on a different site i gre a fabulous patch of sweetcorn, so i'm determined to get it sorted this year! i'm using swift and lark but will keep them in seperate areas of the plot, and i will probably underplant with either butternut squash or lettuce. The squash plants get huge so will do a good job at keeping the weeds down (i hate hoeing!)

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There's vegetable growing in the family, but I must be adopted
Happy Gardening!

The three sisters!

http://www.chaddsfordhistory.org/history/3sisters.htm

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

The three sisters work really well.Have grown my crops on lottie like this for 4yrs,and got really good crops of all three.This year I will only have very small beds in back garden,but still hope to grow small amount this way to get best return for my limited space.

This is very interesting. I will be growing in one metre by one metre beds in my p/tunnel. Am I right in thinking I should try 9 Sweet corns, 9 clg. french beans, and one squash (butternut or Crown Prince) in a bed of that size?

Berr, that sounds about right. Although you may need to restrict the gowth of the squash - there's not many that you can contain to only a square metre! Crown Prince would probaly be a little big - go for a small butternut, delicata or acorn type squash.

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Kris

I child-proofed my house, but they still manage to get in.

Muddy Musings - a blog

I have Butternut "Sprinter". I'll try that.
Thanks, Poledragon.

Hiawatha.

Butternut Sprinter do sprawl a bit Berr but I read somewhere you can train them round in a circle. Maybe you could keep them to 1 sq yd that way.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

You can train the squash round in a circle or threaded around between the sweetcorn stems or your beans.Basically anywhere you want the squash to go, just thread through as it grows!

And also underplant with squashes.

It's Jaxom's Indian trilogy/three sisters thing.

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Bright Blessings
Earthbabe
If at first you don't succeed, open a bottle of wine.