is anyone growing sweetcorn this year. if so what types are you growing?
Minipop... for Chinese cooking and Ovation for main table use.. probably some coloured ones too eg Blue Hopi and Bloody Butcher... but not yet!!
I'd get shot if I didn't grow Minipops. Don't grow proper ones because of me old Dad's denture situation. . He'd go in a sulk if I grew them and he couldn't have any :D
Swift for me, I have grown it the last few years and had really good results. It is a tendersweet so can be grown next to others which is a great advantage. They freeze really well and we are still enjoying them! :)
zuccherino from franchi and early extra sweet
grew early extra last year and they were great, i could eat them straight from the cob in the poly
swift and minipop for me both done quiet well last year.
but much better year before,so give them ago again
Sweetie Pie - and it is ;D
Extra Tender & Sweet my usually reliable favourite, and Incredible after a recommendation from here...... ;D
I grew Golden Bantam last year and I'm trying Double Standard this year
http://www.moreveg.co.uk/shop/article_SWCDS/Sweet-Corn-Double-Standard-Organically-sourced.html?shop_param=cid%3D48%26aid%3DSWCDS%26
swift but am going to put minipop on my list as I LOVE stir frys!!
Quote from: Deb P on February 03, 2010, 08:58:55
Extra Tender & Sweet my usually reliable favourite,
Gets my vote. This was a first with this variety for me last year. Got an excellenct abundance of cobs. (2-3 large cobs from most of the plants so will now be my main variety.)
Quotezuccherino from franchi
This is very attractive with red streaks in the leaves I enjoyed the corn.
I also grew Ashworth last year I shall be trying some of your suggestions instead. Wish I had asked last year.
Minipop-which I struggle to stop the girls from picking and eating raw, Swift is a good one too. I've also grown the standard wilko's one but can't remember what it's called...it's an F1. Grew well, tasted good but not great. ;D
Invincible, Conqueror are my choice this year also Bantam if I can find some, :)
Incredible F1 and also for the first time Sugar mountain F1 from Exhibition seeds
hoping they are going to be very sweet........ :P :P
Had a good crop of Lark sweet corn last year, never had much success with Minipop all pith and no corn.
I like sweetcorn pretty much in reverse order of sweetness - all the original kinds (like Golden Bantam, Kelvedon Glory, Double Standard) which were only bred for earliness, and flavour was retained - but ONLY if you get them into boiling water within 30min of picking them - or they lose both their flavour and their sweetness.
This is why most gardeners started growing them - because the ones in the shops were useless.
The real experts took a stove to the field and got the water boiling before even thinking of taking the corn - heavenly.
The new kinds have been bred for both earliness and sweetness - that's asking a lot - and as so often happens the baby went out with the bathwater. They are admittedly the only ones worth buying from the greengrocer - but you are missing the real experience of sweetcorn if you grow them yourself - they are just even sweeter.
Supersweet varieties taste like a mouthful of white sugar - pretty pointless really unless you are a farmer - ie. want your frozen supplies to be as sweet as canned sweetcorn but with even less flavour. If you grow these you can't grow any other types nearby as they interfere with the sugar gene.
Tendersweet kinds are a reasonable compromise - they have some flavour fresh and retain some sweetness when frozen. I can't find any reference to them suffering badly if you grow the ordinary ones nearby but best to separate as much as possible.
Swift and strawberry popcorn!
Last year I grew Applause, which I loved, and Supersweet, which was ok, but didn't really live up to its name. Am growing squashes around their feet this year to save space.
Someone needs to develop an open-pollinated variety with both taste and long-lasting sweetness. No reason why it shouldn't be done; the only problem is the number of plants you have to grow to avoid inbreeding depression.
According to T&M, you do not need to separate the tendersweets from other varieties of sweetcorn.
Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on February 07, 2010, 16:55:42
Someone needs to develop an open-pollinated variety with both taste and long-lasting sweetness. No reason why it shouldn't be done; the only problem is the number of plants you have to grow to avoid inbreeding depression.
Where's the commercial advantage to a seedsman in doing that.... sweetcorn is prolific in terms of germination success per seed so you only need to seed-save however many plants you want next year plus 10%... They sell you seeds once and never again.... at least anywhere where sweetcorn is grown commercially.....
chrisc
The problem with breeding sweetcorn is that they are from Central America - not the highlands either (which gives runner beans and potatoes a head start and makes them relatively easy to manipulate).
The story of how they emerged in the first place is a real humdinger - there are endless legends of how it happened involving the local gods but basically they were breeding the local grass 8000 years ago and they suddenly got this chromosomal fluke that made sweetcorn.
The basic stock was therefore a long shot in the first place - that kind of thing leaves little leeway in the genes. On top of that they were almost entirely unsuitable for the UK. This helps to explain why it took decades to breed the necessary earliness into them, to my mind it was sheer luck that any flavour was retained at all!
The odds get longer and longer every time you try to breed for something else. I think the 'retain sweetness' gene broke the bank.
It's always possible to get the exact mix of genes you want - just like it's possible to win the lottery. In 20 years time you might get a tendersweet variety that retains the old sweetcorn flavour (or at least as much as we ever had in this country) - but why should that bother us?
We don't need to wait for the lottery to make a big win - we can take the old varieties, pick them, eat them - all within 30 minutes - it's not rocket science...
Cheers
Having tried many varieties over the years have now settled for Applause, Have grown it for the last 3 years with great results. Had a bit of a problem finding seed this year but ok in the end.
Premier Seeds on the eBay shop has loads of great seeds including the Hopi blue sweetcorn all for 99p each with 60p postage. It's 60p postage no matter how many you buy so the more you buy the better it is!
Hi Superfowell and welcome to A4A...
you will be sent to the seedaholics corner if you start posting things like that.. ;D
OH got me 3 packets of Incredible f1 from Wilko's yesterday, 3 packets for £2.50 = 120 seeds. ;) ;D ;D ;D