Sweet Sensation

There is a small window of time when sweetcorn is ready to harvest.  The first sign is that the cobs become swollen and the silky tassels turn brown and dry.  Then when you peel back the layers of protective leaves and press your thumb nail into one of golden kernels, the juice is milky rather than clear.  And from the moment you detach the cobs, the sugar content starts to decrease.  The cobs need to be eaten or frozen immediately to retain the very best flavour.  Leave them sitting around on the plant or in the veg rack and they will turn starchy and lose all their juiciness and flavour.  But catch the crop at its peak of freshness and you will never want a commercially produced cob ever again.....

This year I grew Sweet Sensation, an F1 hybrid which is a supersweet, early variety with some drought resistance.  I started the seeds off early, in pots so that they could be protected first in the greenhouse and then in the cold frame.  When I finally planted them out in the middle of May I still gave them extra protection under fleece.  This means they can have a really long growing season and reach maturity before the sunshine lessens and the cold nights return. 

Sweetcorn has to be planted out in blocks, not rows to allow pollination to take place.  Poor pollination results in stunted or incomplete cobs.  I find that sweetcorn very easy to grow and not susceptible to pests, as long as the bed is well nourished and watered from time to time, particularly when the cobs are starting to swell.  If it’s windy I do stake the plants as they do grow quite tall and can lean into each other.

Yesterday I harvested 28 cobs from 15 plants which is good – just shy of 2 cobs per plant.  I reserved a couple of the smaller ones for the barbecue and Sweet Sensation certainly lived up to its name.  Just a smear of butter and some freshly ground pepper was all that was needed to upstage the grilled chicken.  It was delicious and it is one of the delights of the summer harvest.

I blanched the rest for 2 minutes and got them into the deep freeze in less than an hour from harvesting.  Whilst I was busy in the kitchen, Doc chopped up the mountain of stalks and leaves left behind.  One thing you learn when Growing Your Own, is that veg do not arrive neat and ready trimmed.  Still, the compost heap is topped up nicely now and it all goes towards next year’s crop.