Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
tablespoon per 500ml) of lemon juice, or add two teaspoons of lemon juice to
each cup of mashed vegetable.
Problems
Occasional
botrytis
, but only if growth is crowded or conditions are very damp:
remove affected leaves and spray the remainder of the plant with bicarbonate of
soda solution at the first sign of problems (10g/litre plus a drop or two of phos-
phate-free washing-up liquid or an organic fungicide such as Citrox).
Sweetcorn
Varieties:
'Early Xtra Sweet' (F1), 'Double Standard' (open-pollinated)
The ancestor of modern sweetcorn is a native grass known as Teosinte, first domes-
ticated in the central and southern regions of Mexico more than 6,000 years ago.
The plant we grow today is a very selected and refined version of the original;
unable to self-seed, modern sweetcorn would die out without human intervention.
All sweetcorn, whether open-pollinated or F1, prefers to be pampered in a warm,
sheltered spot with well-manured or composted ground and plenty of water.
Sweetcorn is a great tunnel plant, and making room for just a few plants will give
you an early harvest while you wait for the outdoor plants to ripen. However, it's
tall - so be careful to site it where it isn't going to cast shade on other plants.
Seeds are generally sold as being early-, middle- or late-maturing. Open-
pollinated varieties need a longer season, so only F1s are marketed as early. If
you haven't grown sweetcorn before, or have had limited success, we would
advise growing an early F1 variety of supersweet corn such as 'Early Xtra Sweet',
which keeps its sweetness far longer than older varieties. In the UK it's rarely
worth growing open-pollinated varieties outside as the season often isn't long
enough, or warm enough, to get a decent harvest. Aside from that, you need at
least 200 plants in a block to save seed, and even then the advice is to only save
from the plants in the centre; small wonder so few people attempt it.
Whatever you decide, sweetcorn is a delicious tunnel 'luxury' food, and all varieties
of sweetcorn will be out of the ground in plenty of time for an autumn/winter
planting of something else.
