SWEETCORN
Sow: April to June
Plant: May to July
Harvest: July to October
March: Buy seed, but don’t choose more than one or two varieties.
April: Sow single seeds, 1cm/½in deep per 8cm/3in pot or root-trainer. Keep at 20˚C/68˚F. Germination takes 5–10 days. Keep above 12˚C/54˚F after that.
May: Plant out into the border soil when 10cm/4in high. Allow 30cm/12in between plants. Dig a hole and fill and refill with water. Allow to drain before filling with manure or compost and planting out corn. If using two varieties of corn allow three weeks between sowings.
June: Keep plants watered well. They should grow very fast. Sow more seed in situ for a chance at a late crop. Plant out May sowings.
July: Shake stems carefully, so that pollen falls from the male tassels, at the top of the plant, on to the female silks in the leaf joints. Hoe carefully between plants, so that brittle stems don’t break (or grow a pumpkin to cover the ground in between).
August: Peel back leaves at the end of a corn cob. Press a kernel to check for ripeness. Pick eat and enjoy the ripe cobs. All cobs from one sowing usually ripen within a couple of weeks of one another.
September: Keep harvesting cobs from the later sowings. The season is short and these may not make full cobs.
Remove plants once the crop is finished.
October: Harvest any remaining fruit and remove plants.
SWEETCORN TROUBLES
Damping off: April to May
Rats: July to September