So if you’ve ever sold vegetables at a farmer’s market, you know that one of the first questions that gets asked in May is “When is the sweet corn going to be ready?” This is not a bad questions – just a little uninformed. And if you don’t ask, you may never learn. So, this is what our sweet corn looks like today, June 11:
In most years, we are aiming to have our first sweet corn harvest sometime in the middle of July. If you look at the photo, you can see that we are growing on bare ground with drip irrigation.
To get an earlier harvest and speed the plant growth, it is more ideal to grow on black plastic. But remember, this year is not “most years.” We have had many unseasonably warm days this spring and as a result have moved many of our planting dates up AND shortened the growing days for many crops. This year, we hope to harvest sweet corn by the 4th of July!!
We plant a couple varieties of sweet corn whose estimated maturity time ranges from 74-84 days. Different varieties of sweet corn need to be isolated from each other to avoid cross pollination. This can be done in a couple of ways; one is to plant the different varieties at least 14 days apart because then they will not be tasseling (pollination occurs when the corn is tasseling) at the same time which is when the pollination occurs. Another option is to plant the sweet corn in different physical locations.
