How To Plant Sweet Corn By Hand, Planting Sweet Corn, Grow Your Own Sweet Corn, Planting Sweet Corn, Allotment Gardening
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As a family we absolutely love eating fresh Sweet Corn which is probably just as well as this year I’m planting about 80 plants.
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If you are not quite sure how best to grow Sweet Corn plants when starting from seed, then please feel free to click the link below.
How To Grow Sweet Corn From Seed, Growing Sweet Corn From Seed, Vegetable Gardening
• How To Grow Sweet Corn...
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Now, as I sow multiple seeds into each cell of the seed trays it generally means that I get more plants than I should need for planting out. My advice is keep all the plants until you have done the planting as failures do occur.
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Before planting it is worth remembering that Sweet Corn is actually a type of grass and is therefore pollinated by the wind. Each of the tassels that hangs out of the corn cob represents 1 individual piece of corn. So to get nice full cobs we need to make sure as many of the tassels get pollinated as possible from the flowers that will form at the tops of the plants.
Also, and im not sure if this is true or not but its what ive read elsewhere. Sweet Corn shouldn’t be planted next to mini-pop (baby corn) or popping corn as the latter types can cause sweet corn to be more stachy.
If anyone knows if this is true then please let me know.
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So rather than the normal line, row or singular dot planting that we tend to do for most other crops, Sweet Corn always does better when planted as a block together. Now that block could be in the shape of a square, circle or as is the case at my plot, a rectangle.
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Over the years I have played around with my plant spacing. Most packets and books suggest 45-60cm spacing between plants in lines and rows, depending on variety, but honestly I have found that planting closer actually works just as well. So I plant my sweet corn 30cm apart in their lines and the same distance between rows.
I do wonder if a lot of the planting information is still based around older varieties that did get bigger.
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Tools required;
Hand fork or trowel,
Kneeling pad,
Additional compost or soil,
Clean secateurs or scissors.
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For planting.
If plants have been grown from multi sown seeds then there are 2 options.
Option 1;
Tease the plants apart from one another, making sure to keep the best plants, to provide enough plants for the allocated space.
Option 2;
Alternatively, use a pair of clean and sharp secateurs or scissors to cut down the weakest plant to just leave the best plants in the cell to plant.
I use option 1 as it allows me to keep a few of the plants that I don’t necessarily need. These extra plants I just plant as a singular bundle to use in a just in case situation. An odd plant dies or gets eaten by something then you have that ability to replace it with a plant of similar size and stage of development.
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Set the plants out to your desired spacing.
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Using a hand fork or trowel dig a hole that is a bit deeper than the depth of the root zone that you are planting.
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Insert the sweet corn roots into the hole and back fill the hole with soil, lightly firming down to ensure no large air pockets are left. Voids or large pockets of air can fill with excess water and cause the rotting of the roots.
Once the plants are planted then use some additional soil or compost to lightly mound around the base of the plant.
As the plants develop they will produce additional basal roots to help stabilise the plants and so having extra soil or compost around the base will allow for a better plant to develop, with greater stability, that is capable of producing a better crop.
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Straight after planting give the plants a really good water, around a cup worth of water for each plant.
For the first few weeks it’s important that the plants do not dry out but equally important that the plants do not get saturated.
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The varieties featured in this video are;
Incredible,
Bodacious,
Ambrosia,
Rising Sun,
Mini Pop
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