I have two types of sweetcorn: Tasty Gold/sweet and double standard bicolour. What are the issues about planting both in different beds? Will it affect this years crop or will the issue be about not being able to use seeds because of crossing? All information gratefully received!
It can reduce the sweetness of "super-sweets" but the real issue is only for seed saving. If you are going to eat it fresh I doubt you could tell it had cross pollinated.. :-X
Thanks Saddad, thats really what I wanted to know!
It is more complicated. See my post from last year.
This year, I decided to carry out an experiment to test the claims made in a well known seed catalogue, that isolation from other sweet corn varieties was not required for the varieties Swift F1 and Lark F1.
It was a tough test as I grew 5 different varieties in the same bed. The varieties were Swift F1, Lark F1, Mirai White GT 1007, Honeydew, and a mystery sweet corn from a "Gardening Which" trial a few years ago.
All the varieties were obviously affected by cross-pollination with different coloured kernels or harder kernels, especially noticeable after cooking.
The advice must still be to only grow one variety of sweetcorn at the same time, unless they produce their pollen several weeks apart, such as an early variety and a late variety.
Some of the resulting cobs had very tough, starchy kernels in amongst the tender sweet kernels.
You need to find out using google, exactly what types of sweetcorn, your varieties are.
^^ but in this case they'll be in different beds.
I agree, you need same variety pollination because you are eating the actual seed. Not like a pumpkin where you are eating the seed container.
But: last year, I was given 2 minipop plants which were planted at least 15 meters from any other corn. They grew as strong plants with fruit but i think there wasn't enough of them to pollinate themselves (in spite of my help) and there were no kernels on the cobs.
You sometimes see the same thing with people with a home raised bed - they buy a pack of 5 plants but don't get a crop.
So perhaps, if you need a good sized block of plants to get pollination, you won't get that much cross pollination from adjacent blocks.
Certainly, on an allotment site which is blooming windy and everyone grows a different variety, we all seem to get a crop we're happy with. Happy enough to keep doing it, at least.
I thought that the point of minipop was not to pollinate and eat the unripe fruits. I cut off my males to stop the pollen spreading to my normal sweet corn.
^^ is that right? I guess I was hoping for something like baby sweetcorn but my two did not produce anything particularly appetising at any stage in spite of the strong appearance of the plants.
;D..yes..it is right..next time you go to do a bit of shopping have a look into stir fry section at the supermarket..or frozen veg..those little yellow "spears"..no seeds on them.. ;) ;D
I was originally waiting for them to produce small cobs but lucklity one of my plot neighbours showed me what I was supposed to be picking. It seemed far too early to be picking it, but the more you pick the more you get.
Ugh, why would anyone want to eat the stalks? I'll pass thank you.
But my point still stands. If it were easy for blocks of sweetcorn to pollinate each other, you couldn't grow them on allotment sites.
Yes...it stands and I agree with you. Kokopelli book says.."the pollen can travel on the wind for at least ten kilometers! At the same time 3/4 of these millions of grains of pollen will only travel a few metres....these distances can vary enormoursly depending upon the environment and the presence of natural and unnatural barriers."
Last year I grew 4 different sort of sweetcorn/maize. Those that I hand pollinated for seed purposes were bagged to prevent 'accidents' but otherwise I left them to do it all by them selves..none of the yellows were cross pollinated with purples..and popcorn didn't affect the extra sweet..all were planted about 10-15 metres apart..no corn growing on near neighbours plots.
One cob of the purple maize that wasn't protected had 2 yellow seeds...just one cob and 2 seeds..I would have expected it to be much bigger cross pollination..but no..
But certainly like Realfood did..planted all in same bed..it would have been miracle if they wouldn't have crossed with each others.
For eating purposes I'm not too worried about accidental crosses..never noticed any problems..but seed saving is different thing all together.
Ugh, why would anyone want to eat the stalks.. ;D not quite stalks..it is the immature core of the cob..not quite for everybody's taste..I can eat it but doesn't tickle my taste buds..I think is it more about texture rather than flavour thing. ;D ;D..you made it sound worst than they really are.. ;D ;D..really, they are OK.. ;) ;D
^^ nice try Goodlife but your heart's not in it.
;D
I am doing another experiment this year with my 2 varieties of tendersweet corn. The 2 varieties will be planted about 3 m apart, and as they are different colours, I will immediately see the extent of cross-pollination.
If you're growing them on a farm scale, then the pollen probably can travel long distances. I've had two varieties at opposite ends of the plot, and had no problems.
Your Table Gold is a supersweet, your Double Stanadard is an open pollinated standard corn .
They need to be isolated from each other either by distance or maturity date.
You don`t need the distances that commercail corn growers use but you do need 25 feet OR you need to isolate by by maturity date which needs to be 10 days minimum 15 days is safer.
Table Gold is a mid early variety, Double Standard is an early, that would be too close for comfort for me, if one was an early and the other a late I would say go for it, but not by date in this case.
If you can do the distance then you should be fine.
If they cross, this seasons corn will be tough and starchy in the Table Gold, you won`t see any apprciable difference in the Double Standard for taste but it may not be bicolour.,.how ever..if isolated correctly you could save seeds from the Double Standard as it is open pollinated, if crossed they would not come true.. so again back to distance.
Personally I wouldn`t do it unless you can give them the 25 feet.
XX Jeannine
I'll be planting out another 24 to go with the 24 already done in the next couple of days (and I'll be sowing a few more yet)... they're all the same variety adn I'd never plant much less than 20 as a block..... even then you expect the upwind edge of the block to be a bit shy about setting.....Thankfully the plot neighbour to the side the wind blows from doesn't grow sweetcorn and they're the last plot on the site in that direction....
chrisc
If they're not in already, plant Double Standard now, Table Gold in a couple of weeks. That would do it, otherwise plant them out at opposite ends of your plot.
well where live most people are fans of white sweet
corn. the variety that is considered standard is silver queen.
For canning the standard white corn is country gentleman/shoe peg corn.
it is still good roasting corn.
At last I have found Golden Bantam, a sweetcorn variety that I can keep for seed. All the varieties I have seen apart from this one are f1 hybrid, which are not usually suitable for seed saving.
I am looking forward to saving seed for a few years before I have to buy more
(from www.realseeds.co.uk). The quality deteriorates over time unless you can plant a field full. I only had a couple of packets, so will see what happens.
Gypsy, there are two versions of this corn. The original Golden Bantam and Golden Bantam Improved. .The improved one has larger cobs, more kernels and stays fresh a bit longer than the original. Which do you have. The maturity times differ by about 12 days.
Bear is mind they have to be cooked as soon as thet are pulled from the plant.
There are a couple of other open polinated ones that you may be interested in , one is a bicolour one that is excellent for an OP corn.
XX Jeannine