Sweet Corn for Northern Climates

I have used Peaches & Cream for the most part, curious what others have used and preferred…

While not as far north as you, we have had good results with Honey Select. Big, sweet, 8" cobs on stalks that have grown to 8ft. Most of the stalks gave us two cobs, but the second one wasn’t very big, which is probably the norm. We harvested ours in about 80 days.

The good thing about HS, is that it’s a sy hybrid, which is a supersweet that doesn’t have to be immediately processed after picking. In other words it won’t turn starchy as fast as other sweet corns when picked. I think you have up to 10 days to process it, compared to a typical sweet corn which might give you a day at most. From what I understand, it doesn’t have to be isolated from other types of sweet corn.

Not familiar with P&C, but we really like HC. We did pick up some Ambrosia and Kandy Korn recently, so we might give those a shot this year.

If trying different types of hybrids, you have to be careful about them cross-pollinating. You can avoid that by staggering the planting times.

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I really don’t like sugar corn that is the standard product these days. Anyway, it stays sweet so long you don’t need to use valuable space in order to experience good ss or se sweet corn. It is readily available around here from farm stands.

Golden Bantam was the first widely planted yellow sweet corn which works well for me and provides great corn taste without being cloyingly sweet. I also grow an heirloom white that works much better for me than white queen or whatever the standard old-fashioned white is called (I’m a bit foggy today). I can’t remember the name due to the afore mentioned cloudiness, but it is something with evergreen in the name, as I recall. It seems like the only farmers around here growing heirloom corn anymore are the Amish- but if you were raised on industrial food with a constant supply of soft drinks you probably crave the corn syrup. Well, I’m culturally N. European- people who come from more southern climates often crave higher sugar and lower acid than I do, even without a childhood drenched in soda pop.

Maybe you’re talking about Stowells’s Evergreen? That’s an older white heirloom sweet corn, if I remember. I think we tried that a few years ago, but it didn’t do well for us. But, there could have been a number of reasons for that.

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I grew illini extrasweet sweet corn before. It is very sweet, both me and raccoon loves it

Silver Queen? That’s the old time standard here.

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Apparently sweet corn hits a nerve @alan, we northerners don’t have all the fancy pluots, apriums etc, maybe thats why we do like some sweetness in our food. Yeepers anyways thanks for the input guys. :slight_smile:

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I have grown Espresso for a few years now. It seems to do well in our short season and tastes good (IMO).

Grow the “No More Raccoon” variety! Tastes terrible but at least the coons think so as well and they won’t destroy the patch before you pick it! :grin:

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you think you will bite into something that even raccoon thinks it tastes bad😓

That is my dry wasp humor- I don’t actually fault anyone for their sweet teethe- I’m not that much a snob. Well, maybe I am. But I was kidding on the square- I do believe sugar to be addictive. Maybe the sugar in sweet corn is perfectly healthy though, it is probably slow release sugar like fruit. Cellulose scaffolding- just don’t make a habit of squeezing it to make corn juice- unless you are fermenting it- in that case, screw it!

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I grew Iochief and Double Standard last year, both old time varieties (su). We used to eat lots of Iochief when I was a kid, but it was straight from the garden always. For me now, it was a total bust because we didn’t have time to eat them right away after picking and they were completely turned to starch in the refridgerator when we did get to eating it.

I got some Northern Xtra Sweet and Gurney’s Gotta Have It this year. Both are sh2 varieties, so the super-sweet stuff. Northern Xtra Sweet is a short season (67 days) and Gotta Have It is a normal season (~78? days) variety.

I am going to try planting the Northern Xtra Sweet soon, as it is supposed to be more tolerant of cool soil temperatures than other sh2 varieties. Yesterday’s 4 in soil temp was around 55 degrees on the ISU Extensions’ site.

When I was researching what sweet corn to try, two kept coming up the most.
Honey Select (se/sh2) and Serendipity Triplesweet Also a se/sh2 hybrid. Seems these are popular but I have not grown either. Next year I’ll try some. I only grow corn every other year.
It should be noted that HS is an AAS winner. So probably the one to try.The 2018 AAS winner is American Dream a sh2 type.

when I select sweet corn, I really don’t look at how many days to harvest.it all depends on local temperature and soil condition. My rule of thumb is kneen high by 4th of July, then I know my corn growing is OK.

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I always grow a white, yellow and bicolor. My white is always Silver Queen and the yellow and bi-color always vary. This year it’s Café and Strong Start. I never worry about SE, SS, et.al. and always get good production. Once in a while our season is too short for the Silver Queen, it’s always my late variety, and I choose the yellow and bi-color as my early and mid season croppers.

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One year I grew a couple kinds, and they did pollinate each other and the corn was terrible! Not even fit for pigs. I won’t ever do that again.

I love sweet corn. A local roadside stand in Little Compton, RI called Walker’s have the sweetest corn. Every week they change their home grown varieties. Their white last fall was “Mirage” and their yellow was “Nirvana”. Both were excellent. That was last August. :corn::corn::corn::corn:

I’m expecting that will happen eventually !

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Very nice garden! How effective that electric fence is in terms of against small animals like groundhog, bunnies, etc?

Absolutely worthless! but it keeps the deer out. I use a Zareba 10 mile solar unit and it works pretty well. If the ground gets dry I water the grounding rods and that perks it up. Entire garden is around 6500 sq ft.