The Cottage Smallholder


stumbling self sufficiency in a small space

We grow our sweetcorn in a large recycled storage bin

First sweetcorn cobs of the seasonAn old friend of ours, Edward Twentyman, used to tell us how delicious corn on the cob is if it is harvested and cooked within minutes.

“Once the cob is cut, the sugar starts to turn to starch.”

Now that we grow sweetcorn ourselves we’ve found this fact to be true. Unfortunately for us, Edward and his wife Chantal moved to France a few years ago. They are defenitely not the couple whose story ends this post! Tonight we are going to enjoy the first two cobs of the season. As an accompaniment to pork chops baked with a couple of tablespoons of our own wild plum jelly (click on August 21 2006 for the recipe). We will also be feasting on our round courgettes, dipped in plain flour with a good dash of pepper and salt, and fried gently in garlic infused olive oil until soft. Today the cobs will be baked in the oven but they are better grilled, I think.If you grow sweetcorn in a border, the plants have to be at least 12″ apart in rows 12″ apart and have to be grown in blocks, to enable wind pollination of the female flowers. The plants grow to statuesque proportions, often over 5′, so can cut out the light to other vegetables in the kitchen garden. A great way of getting around this problem is to grow sweetcorn in a very large pot, as the plants can be raised much closer together. I found an old plastic storage bin a couple of years ago, which is ideal. The sort of thing that you can find in Homebase for storing toys. Even at high street prices, these sturdy containers are much cheaper than buying giant terracotta or even plastic pots. I drilled some holes in the bottom of my recycled one for drainage.

I plant the sweetcorn in a mixture of compost from last year’s tomato grow-bags and some good compost from our composting bin. They do really well. We grow 7 plants in this 17″ (diameter) x 14″ (deep) pot and cut at least 3 cobs from each plant. I’m not sure how many cobs per plant one can expect from sweetcorn planted in a border.

Every time that I see our pot of tall sweetcorn I remember a holiday in France, deep in the heart of sweetcorn growing country. We were staying in a gite that belonged to an Irish couple who had moved to France to enjoy self sufficiency and the good life. A local French farmer proudly announced that the couple’s teenage sons were helping with the harvest. When we asked in what capacity, he explained, “They are castrating the mice.” We were astonished that the French were operating such a fiddly form of pest control, especially when he complemented them on their use of hefty machetes. Suddenly the penny dropped and we realised that their summer jobs were just cutting sweetcorn cobs and the ‘mice’ that he’d mentioned was the maize.

Tips and Tricks:

  • f growing sweetcorn in pots, put a nutritious mulch around the base of the stems (where you can see a bobbly root growth) at the beginning of July. This helps to stabilise the stems and increases productivity.
  • If you have a glut, sweet corn freezes well. Blanche before freezing.


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13 Comments

  1. I lived most of my life on the farm and used to raise corn for market gardening. Now I moved to the city and want to try raising corn-on-the-cob in a container. That’s why I found this site. I want to respond to Diane’s question about cutting off the flowering tops of the plants.

    No, under no circumstances do you want to cut off the flowering top. That is called the tassel and it pollinates the cobs. Without this pollination, you get no kernels on your cob, i.e. no corn-on-the-cob. However, according to popular wisdom, the tassel of one corn plant does not pollinate its own cob–it pollinates the cob of its neighbour.

    For this reason, I was taught that in a conventional garden one must plant two rows of corn side by side. I see in this thread that it also works to have several plants in one large container. I might try it this spring and see what happens.

  2. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Dianne

    No need to cut the top of the plant. Just keep a beady eye out for the corn ripening.

    Hi Simon

    I don’t have any recipe ideas for sweet corn relish. Sounds delicious though.

    As to unusual veg we grew tomatiloes one year and they were a great success. Flufitus Mupitus at http://www.coopette.com grow lots of unusual fruit and veg – well worth checking out her site.

  3. Hi there… Im loving the site and working through your recipes! Although not had luck growing sweetcorn yet, next year looks promising, but would love to try sweetcorn relish. While its so cheap at supermarket! Any recipe ideas?

    Also, any ideas for really unusual veg to try growing that works well and can be used easily in cooking or preserving? Tomatoes are nice, cucumbers too, but everyone has them and you cant even give them away at this time!!

  4. diane rickner

    hi there
    would love your advice as you seem to know what you are doing around sweetcorn. this is the first time i have grown it. it is doing very well, i have about ten plants with 2/3 sweetcorn growing on each plant. but i would like to know if i should be cutting off the top flowing part of the plant.
    thanks
    diane

  5. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Dock

    Your sweetcorn sounds amazing – how exciting. Love sweetcorn, especially home grown – it’s so much sweeter as it’s straight from stalk to pot.

    Thanks for dropping by.

  6. Dock Emery

    I was reading your article on growing sweetcorn. I plant a nice size garden each year, usually only tomatos, bell peppers, and green beans. I can the beans and the tomatos, with onion and peppers added to it. This year I decided to try my luck at sweetcorn also. I figured that since I live in the best corn state on the planet, Iowa, it should turn out ok. It’s not only turning out ok, some of it is unreal. I just measured my tallest cornstocks, and they are over eight feet tall. At this rate, they will top out at over nine foot from the ground to the top of the tassle. I have been around corn all of my life, NEVER have I seen sweetcorn reach such hights.

  7. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Neville

    If you keep on cutting the cobs as they mature this shouldn’t be a problem.

    It’s only well into autumn that some of the cobs become stunted and don’t develop so well.

  8. NEVILLE gREEN

    Yes! but how many cobs should one allow on the plant, before it is over-burdened and produces unfinished cobs?
    NG

  9. tractorfactorsteve

    oops, meant to be with the cucumber glut entry. too much cucumber wine! now that WOULD be a challenge….

  10. tractorfactorsteve

    make ‘my’ cuc, tom and onion chutney…brag, brag.

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