Nancy Bubel - Grow the Best Corn

by Nancy Bubel

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Bubel, Nancy

Grow the best corn / by Nancy Bubel
A Storey Publishing Bulletin, A-68
ISBN 0-88266-282-1

Corn is a New World plant, native to parts of Mexico and Central and South America. When Columbus landed in the New World in 1492, native American Indians had been growing popcorn, sweet corn, dent corn, and flint corn for hundreds of years. They had developed these distinct varieties by repeatedly selecting the best ears of each type and saving and planting the seed.

Sweet corn is a gardeners vegetable, one of the most eagerly awaited summer crops. By growing your own, you can have it at its best: sweet, tender, juicy kernels, five minutes from the patch. Fresh sweet corn is so good that it needs no sauces or fancy recipes; simply steam and serve. Many gardeners like to eat raw corn while husking it. Corn is a vigorous plant that responds to generous fertilizing, so it is satisfying to grow.

Corns best features are its sweet, delicate flavor (sweet corn) and its versatility (popcorn, flint, and dent corn). On the negative side, corn takes more growing space than many other vegetables, uses up a lot of soil nitrogen, and if grown in large plots exposes the soil to erosion. There are ways of getting around these difficulties, though, as we will show you in this bulletin.

Usually, selecting a vegetable variety to grow is a pretty easy choice mainly because you do not have that many varieties to choose from. But if you have ever counted the varieties of corn offered in most seed catalogs, you know that selecting a variety of corn to grow involves considering a lot of different factors. (On the last pages of this bulletin there are forty-three recommended varieties and thats just a sampling of what is available!)

To select a variety of corn to grow, first decide whether you want to grow sweet corn, popcorn, flint corn, dent corn, flour corn, super-sweet corn, or high-lysine corn. Then you will want to choose between hybrid and open-pollinated varieties.

Lets consider, first, the characteristics of each of the different kinds of corn you might want to grow, again with a bow to the native Americans, who, without tools, or books, or an understanding of the principles of botany, managed to divide the corn family into five distinct groups: sweet corn, popcorn, flint corn, dent corn, and flour corn. Recently, plant breeders have given us new types of corn to consider, including super-sweet varieties and high-lysine corn.

Sweet Corn. This demanding variety is so good that it is worth extra soil feeding and careful timing to pluck its perfection from the corn patch. Some early sweet corn is ready as soon as fifty-five days from planting, making it possible, in some areas, to follow the corn with a fall vegetable crop or a soil-improving cover crop. Sweet corn thrives on hot weather, plenty of soil lime and nitrogen, good drainage, and abundant moisture.

Kernels of sweet corn contain a relatively small amount of starch and a large amount of water containing sugar in solution. When dry, the kernels shrink and wrinkle. The characteristic sweetness and tenderness of sweet corn are actually caused by a genetic defect that keeps the starch grains in the kernel few and small and prevents the conversion of soluble sugars into more starch.

Types of corn

Sweet corn is generally less robust in germination and growth than dent corn, flint corn, or popcorn. Also, it is somewhat more demanding of rich soil, and often less disease-resistant.

Popcorn. Ears of popcorn are shorter than those of most kinds of sweet corn, and the kernels are smaller. Each kernel contains a small central core of soft starch around the germ, surrounded by a larger outer layer of hard starch. The kernels pop when heat expands the moisture in the center of the kernel, and the resulting steam bursts the hard, starchy coating.

Like sweet corn, popcorn does well in hot weather and well-drained, limed soil; but it will thrive on somewhat leaner soil and less moisture than sweet corn. Most popcorn varieties need 90 to 100 days to mature. Some, like strawberry popcorn, are also decorative and frequently grown for roadside stands.

Flint Corn. You do not hear much about flint corn, but it is a useful and delicious staple corn, good for year-round storage. The kernels are hard and smooth, not shriveled like sweet corn or indented like dent corn. The hard kernels can be ground to produce a sweet, nutritious meal for use in making muffins and cornmeal crackers, mush, and bread. Flint corn needs a rather long growing season about 110 to 120 days but it is more tolerant of cool weather and prolonged dampness than sweet corn. Flint corn can be found in varieties colored red, blue, black, orange, and mahogany.

Dent Corn. Dent corn, also called field corn, has a dimple at the tip of each kernel, caused by the rapid drying of the soft starch at the center of the kernel. Immature field corn can be sweet, and it is perfectly good to eat although it is neither as tender nor as sweet as sweet corn. Both the plant and the cob are large. You might want to raise small plots of dent corn for feed if you keep animals. The kernels contain more soft starch than flint corn. They can be ground in a hand or powdered mill.

Flour Corn. Varicolored like flint corn, flour corn has much more soft starch in the kernel. It grinds to a fine flour, rather than the coarse meal produced by flint and dent corn.

Super-Sweet Corn. These varieties sound like the answer to a gardeners dream. Most of the new extra-sweet corn varieties are not only sweeter than standard corn to start with, they also hold their sugar content for a longer time after picking, because conversion of their sugar to starch takes place more slowly. It is not true, though, that they increase in sweetness after picking, only that their sugar content twenty-four hours after picking is higher than that of day-old regular sweet corn, a quality that has made these varieties especially useful for sale at roadside stands.