Allotment sweetcorn
It was worth waiting for. Despite the fact that my parents have informed me that their potato harvest ranks in the hundredweight, and that their tomatoes were weeks earlier than ours, we are definitely the winners in the sweetcorn stakes, mainly because my parents didn’t grow any.We love corn on the cob anyway, and Himself once spent a few weeks working as a sweetcorn stripper on the Isle of Wight (isn’t that a job titled to conjure with?) although the whole story is not a happy one – his father died, and he took four days off to deal with all those things that have to be dealt with, and when he went back to work he was told he’d been sacked in his absence because they didn’t let casual workers take time off for any reason. And this was one of those firms that supplies Tescos!
Anyway, our sweetcorn, home-grown and all that, knocked the supermarket varieties into a cocked, or any other shaped, hat. It was simply sublime. It was sweet, juicy, easy to eat and very palatable: some people find that sweetcorn isn’t easy to eat because of all the little fibres that get between your teeth but with Lark Early that doesn’t seem to be a problem, there were a few fibres but they were soft and easy to get rid of by brushing said teeth.
What we’ve learned is that sweetcorn is easy to grow, but not quite so easy to germinate. We had about half our seed corn actually sprout, so next year we will start it a little later and make sure it is warm enough. It doesn’t like overly wet conditions when germinating either, and I did find that when I emptied the non-sprouting pots, three corn had germinated but then rotted off, so we will take more care with air circulation and drainage on our sweetcorn pots, because it’s worth it.
Labels: allotment sweetcorn
Posted by The Allotment Blogger on Monday, August 17, 2009
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4 Comments:
We discovered that starting ours off under plastic using an old airer for the frame worked for us to get things going early enough and we used to do that in Derbyshire. We also found the worse thing you could do was to transplant them as they just sat for a month and sulked.
One question we have about sweetcorn is how do you strip it off the cob? We usually eat ours on the cob but there is a chance next year of being able to grow more and then use it for freezing but how do you get the kernals off in one piece?
Glad your sweetcorn was tasty..on reading what you have written I think I probably over watered mine which was why I ended up with none...good to know for next year.. :-)
Well done on the sweet corn.
Sorry that this is probably not the best place for these but I couldn't find a contact address.
I'm sure you must be aware of the problems experienced by allotment holders last year due to the use of manure contaminated by a persitent herbicide called aminopyralid. Information has been collated about this problem from the links on this page http://www.glallotments.btik.com/p_Contaminated_Manure.ikml
Just to update on the latest re aminopyralid contamination in case you would like to provide updates on your website or to allotment holders in your area.
The latest infomation re manure contamination is posted on my website here http://www.glallotments.btik.com/p_herbicide_latest.ikml
I have also sent out a email for circulation by everyone I know that has been affected which is here http://www.glallotments.btik.com/attachments/contaminated_manure_alert.pdf which you may find useful to circulate to allotment holders in your area.
It is particularly important that gardeners be aware of the need for caution when obtaining manure in light of the fact that the government are now considering reinstating the licence that was temporarily suspended last year. As this is a concern to many gardeners you may wish to publicise an a epetition that has been started here http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/aminopyralidban/
I am posting updates as I get them on my blog http://glallotments.blogspot.com/ just on case you want to keep a watching brief.
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