Growing Sweet Corn

There's nothing like the taste of fresh picked sweet corn. It's something our family looks forward to but also dreads every year. The dreaded part is the work effort involved in processing and freezing the corn for the upcoming year. Is it worth it? Some will tell you most definitely yes. Others might tell you that they are not so sure. They might suggest it's worth it to a point -- meaning, if we just didn't have to grow so much each year.
So why grow so much? The answer would because you just never know from one year to the next what mother nature is going to throw at you. So by planting a little extra you can compensate should any hardships be encountered. This year mother nature wasn't too bad to us. Only a few small obstacles were thrown our way. An early season 5 inch frog-strangling rain washed away major sections of corn but transplanting put everything back into some resemblance of order. A late season micro thunderstorm dumped a small amount of rain but in the process it blew down a good portion of the corn crop just a few days after the silks started to form. Luckily it wasn't too bad and staking and tying the corn back up was easily accomplished. The abnormally dry spring was able to be offset by a good bit of tap water from the garden hose albeit at the expense of a high water bill. The raccoons were kept at bay by the electric fence. And, caterpillar and stink bug damage was kept at a minimum. In short, this year looks to be shaping up as a pretty good year.
Choosing the right variety of sweet corn to plant is very important. Backyard corn growers know there are a seemingly endless number of choices to select from. There is no one right choice. It seems that everyone has their particular favorite. Our family favorite over the years has been a variety called "How Sweet it Is". It's a white corn of the super sweet variety. The one with the sh2 gene. I first began planting this variety in the early 1980's. I had always purchased my seed at the local garden center. Then one year the garden center decided not to carry the seed anymore. Why so? Their reasoning was that the seed did not germinate very well and as a result many folks returned to the store demanding a refund. So after several years of having this problem, the local garden center decided that it just wasn't business wise to carry the seed anymore.
One of the nice attributes of "How Sweet it Is" corn is that ears can be frozen directly (without blanching) and they will still maintain its sweet flavor. Also, because of its sweet crisp flavor, it makes the best macque choux or smothered corn. (We usually omit the tomatoes and bell peppers so as to not cover up the flavor of the corn.) Those in our family would tell you when it hits the table this variety it's second to none. But alas, so it was. No one else in town carried the seed. Ordering was a possibility but for whatever reason -- maybe poor germination, maybe experimentation, whatever, I decided to try different "experimental" varieties.
Each year after sampling the new "test" variety, the comments from my eldest daughter Mitsie always came back the same -- Dad, when are you going to plant that white corn again? This went for 4 years of "testing". Then during the Christmas 2004 holiday period I happened to be rummaging through my freezer and found a 4-year-old package of the frozen white corn stashed in the back of the freezer. I asked Mitsie, who was present at the time, if she wanted the corn. I told her if after cooking it didn't measure up then she could just throw it away. So she said sure -- I'll give it a try. After about 3 weeks I received a phone call from Mitsie. She asked "Dad, do you remember that white corn you gave me?"... Well, last night I cooked it and Jonathan (her husband) wanted to know what I did different from usual. She told him I did nothing different. He then said, well this is the best corn we've had in quite a while. So as you might have guessed... for the next 2005 spring garden (last year) I gave up on experimenting and ordered the "How Sweet It Is" sweet corn.
The 2005 season corn harvest was not all that great. It turned out to be a good thing we had planted a "little extra". The major problems in 2005 were extremely poor seed germination and terrible rainstorms that knocked over the corn right at the optimal time for pollenation. Ears were poorly filled out and we also had a fair amount of stink bug, squash bug and caterpillar damage. However, 2005 did have one success point. I found out by experimentation that this variety of corn needs a week of nighttime lows in the 50's or higher to have adequate germination. That bit of information was a major help for the 2006 planting. By following the nighttime low forecast, the germination for the same leftover seed from 2005 was much improved in 2006.
So now that the 2006 corn has started to come in we can both enjoy it and dread it. And who knows what will happen in 2007. Some folks may be happy, and some may be a little sad. You just never know.