Allotment Sweetcorn: a new growing experience

We’re growing sweetcorn for the first time this year. I’d have to describe it, thus far, as a mixed experience. To begin with the germination was good, about 80% of the first batch of corn we put in. But the second lot (as previously discussed) was planted by himself and only 2 of the 14 kernels germinated because he planted them too deeply. The third lot didn’t come up at all, so we had around dozen seedlings, which grew beautifully in the greenhouse.

Second disaster – when we brought them outside to harden them off, things went well for a couple of days and then our idiot dog (as opposed to our intelligent dog) managed to knock the tray of seedlings to the ground, breaking four of them. Two have recovered, but are a bit stunted, two just gave up the will to live.

Then we planted the corn out at the allotment and although we knew that there was something we were supposed to do, we couldn’t quite remember what it was. The answer? Net the corn for a few weeks to keep the pigeons from pecking it out of the ground. So the next day we went back and found some of our biggest seedlings had been pecked at, and replanted them and rather belatedly, netted them.

So I’m not wholly impressed by our somewhat feeble block of corn, although I can fully recognise that the problem is with us, not with the corn itself, and I’m wondering if we’ve just been jinxed or if the reason we’ve never grown corn before is that it’s a bit of a faff and a fiddle?

Labels: allotment-sweetcorn, growing sweetcorn