Focus on... Sweetcorn

If you get the spacings and the timings right, you too can be enjoying delicious sweetcorn harvests. Lucy Chamberlain explains how to find your sweet spot

- Lucy Chamberlain

ONCE you have tried fresh, homegrown sweetcorn, nothing shop-bought will compare, but isn't it tricky to grow? Not with the right treatment! Let's look at what this must-grow crop needs.

A different grass

Sweetcorn is actually a massive, lofty grass. Its reputation for being fickle is down to the way it photosynthesis. Giving you a quick biology lesson, most plants use the C3 pathway for this energy-giving process, but sweetcorn, having evolved in arid regions, uses C4.

C4 is excellent in hot, dry summers, but struggles in cool, damp ones. So a bad summer can result in poor corn. But don't despair! There are loads of ways to combat this (see panel on next page) that focus on starting plants off early, choosing the right variety for your locality, keeping things warm, and boosting growth when it's most critical.

Follow these guidelines, and you'll be fine - regardless of our infamous British summers!

Pollination principles

Being a grass, sweetcorn is wind-pollinated. The male flower ('tassel') must deposit its pollen on all the female pistils ('silk') for cob kernels to swell. Planting in blocks, not rows, boosts this as neighbouring plants pollinate each other. Space plants 14in (35cm) apart each way, in blocks of at least 16 (four x four) plants. This leads to another issue: starchy kernels caused via cross-pollination.

There are many different types of sweetcorn, the more traditional starchier ones tainting the sugar-levels of sweeter types if they are planted close together. The permutations of this are mindboggling, so stick to growing one or two varieties each year and remember to follow the seed suppliers' instructions.

Lucy's corner

Six tips for growing the sweetest corn