When a site says 85 days to maturity does that mean from when planted, or when seedling first sprouts? I think mine is ready! Well some of it at least! Any hints as to when to harvest appreciated.
It’s been 85 days today, since I planted it, not sprouted. So there or close for sure.
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Sprout. Soil temp makes the days of germination vary
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The days to maturity is really relative. A corn that says 75 days will mature about 10 days before one that says 85, but I wouldn’t expect to actually see it ready on day 85–it might be day 81 or day 90. The actual time will vary with your climate and growing season and growing conditions. I figure the corn will be getting ready about 3 weeks after the ears/silks appear. The silks will dry down and if you feel the ears, the ear will feel like a cylinder of almost constant diameter to the end, then abruptly taper off. Ears that aren’t ready will gradually get narrower and end in a point. When I find that they abruptly taper off, then I’ll peel the husks back just enough to see if the kernels are filled and ready.
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Thanks Super helpful. They look ready so I checked days to maturity and it was right there. Although all ears do not look ready. It been a few years since I have grown corn, thanks a lot for the tips!
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OK, the corn is ready, the kernels are milky. Some of the ends didn’t develop, but my patch nis only 4x12 I was a touch worried about patchy pollination. It seems fine, ears are full.
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Don’t want to start a new thread for my little observation so I’ll hijack a little.
I don’t have room for sweet corn so we buy ours from a farm that specializes in sweet corn.
Anyway I used my new Refractometer just for kicks. 15 brix. Anyone have any numbers to compare?
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According to this link Produce Quality and Safety 15% is at the higher end of the range for Su sweet corn, but very low for Sugar Enhanced or Super Sweet sweet corn.
I think the sugar in sweet corn is highly dependent on when it is picked. I think the optimum time to harvest sweet corn is just before the kernels are completely filled out. In other words, the rows are just barely touching one another. The kernels are smaller at this stage, but the corn is at maximum sweetness and has no starch. It’s a dessert product at this stage, imo. Just waiting a few days when the kernels finish filling out, I can tell the sugar drops, and the starch goes up. It’s still good at that stage, and you get larger kernels, but it’s not quite as tasty.
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The is the first time I grew sh2 corn. I wanted to try it as it is said to freeze well with blanching.
I only grow corn every other year. I usually grow SE corn, trying various whites in the future. I like them a touch better.
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You should try serendipity or honey select. Awesome corn
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I had read the numbers from various universities. I was wondering if any of this group was using their Refractometer to measure their vegetables. A lot of folks on this forum garden and many have meters.
The corn was very good IMO.
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Tanks for the suggestions, I need suggestions, I will try one next time. I wish i grew it more, it will be 2019 before I try again.Happy with currant crop, but I have tried so few.
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@Jwsemo,and @thecityman, I have a question about Honey Select. We planted a large plot of it in early June. Now it’s past tasseling and has set ears, with silk on them.
Some of the ears are very large, so we checked one of them as the silk had turned from the original purple to brown, and ear felt full. To our surprise, the kernels are white, when we’re expecting it to be yellow! Did we pick it too soon, and if so, will the white kernels turn yellow? She peeked into some other large ears, and they appear to be white inside as well. The cob we tasted was pretty sweet.
Days to maturity for HS is about 79 days, so maybe it needs some more time? We’re sitting at about 60-65 days since sprouting.
If it all ends up being white, then we’ll have lots of white corn, because we also planted a good plot of Silver Queen.
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The silk will be black when ripe. Start checking ears when the silk gets almost black. I start planting sweet corn as early in April as possible. Usually my last patch is in about mid may. The earlier you can plant corn the better. Honey select is solid yellow. Also all of the tripple sweet varieties must be isolated from all other types of sweet corn. It should not be allowed to Polinate with silver queen.
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Thanks. So, I guess it is still a couple weeks before it’ll be yellow? I would say the silk is dirty blonde in color, but the ears are big already.
We would have liked to planted our corn earlier, like in May, but our ground was way too wet to plant in the spring. Even after we planted the corn and the beans (June 6), we had a small flood that washed out some of our garden. I imagine some of the seed got washed out as we have some incomplete rows.
We also planted some 3 year old Iochief yellow corn, and maybe 10% of that sprouted, so we sowed more HS in the vacant spots. My wife wanted to try some popcorn, so also we have a row of Japanese Hulless, and Strawberry. Both of those have small ears on them now. Some stalks have 4 ears on them, I guess because they’re a smaller cob?
If we can keep the varmits out (knock on wood, no real damage yet), this might be our best corn harvest in four years here.
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If you read up on the synergistic hybrid sweet corn varieties, such as honey select, serendipity and the mabye half dozen other synergistic varieties, it is definitely recommended to isolate it from other types of sweet corn, or you run the risk of it comming out starchy. If you Google synergistic hybrid sweet corn you can see what I am talking about
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That one looks good to me, and yeah it will be all I grow. I’m a little confused about the pollination as it seems to me if both are very sweet they should be fine. I can see not growing popcorn or regular feed corn with it. But if you grew two Sh2 types and they mix, so what? I will not for now.
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If you look it up it says synergistic hybrids have to be isolated from other types. I really don’t know why, but that’s what they say. I either grow honey select or serendipity, you can grow them together as thy are both synergistic or "tripple sweet " types
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@Jwsemo is right in saying the tassels should be black (or VERY dark brown) and really should be that way for a few days in my experience. Honey Select is most definitely yellow when ripe. Its also yellowish up to a week before being ripe, so it seems as though you either picked yours REALLY early of you have some mislabeled seed. But early is likely…because the kernels on mature HS are actually very large (as are the ears) so if you look at it a week or more early it could look like it is almost mature white corn. I really hope you didn’t pick a lot of it too early, because it REALLY sweetens up the last week so you won’t get the true wonderfulness of HS until it matures. I’m not surprised to hear that you’re having a good corn year…this was undoubtedly the very best year I’ve ever had. My HS was indeed “supersweet”, had large ears, full ears, was still tender, etc.
I have always read that honey select doesn’t have to be isolated from MOST other corns. My crop was 18 feet away from a 30 acre stand of field corn that was at the same stage as mine and it didn’t affect it at all. I encourage you to do a simple google search using 3 words" “Honey Select Isolation” and you’ll see dozens of sources saying it doesn’t have to be isolated from most other corn. So don’t worry toooo much about that. (Though there are exceptions)
@thecityman and @Jwsemo, thanks for replies. I did some research after I posed the question. Namely on the stages on sweet corn development. Corn goes from a vegetative state to a reproductive state. The R state begins with the tassels dusting the ear silks with pollen. At the R2 stage, the kernels are white and look like blisters, which my wife confirmed.
We tasted it, and it was pretty sweet, and the kernels were decent sized. We only pulled one ear off the stalk, and inspected three others by peeking inside. Don’t recall the fluid being clear or milky. Most of the silks are still kind of purple and moist, although some are turning a light brown.
The next stage is the milk stage, when the kernel starts to turn yellow, which I assume is when the corn needs to be picked? Because the next step is the dough stage, which means the kernel becomes more starchy than milky. I would assume it would be too late then to pick. So, I guess we’re still a week off from time to start picking.
I did read about keeping a sh2 supersweet corn like HS isolated from a regular (su) sweet corn like SQ or the HS will produce more starchy kernels. I will say that Silver Queen is maturing later than the Honey Select. DTM for the white corn is 92 days, and for the HS is 79 days. The SQ just started its tasseling and pollen drop just a few days ago, whereas the HS is done with that. So, it may not matter. And then I saw Kevin’s comments about HS not being too susceptible to these cross pollination issues.
Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it now, I think they’ll be OK. I do find it interesting that ears start to form before the pollen starts dropping. I, and my wife thought that the pollen drop causes the ears to form when it falls into the crevasses in the leaf collars.
Do you guys usually get two full sized ears of HS per plant? I wonder if this is true for most of these hybrids. Our HS and SQ are showing two ears max.
You can’t yet be sure how many ears per plant will develop enough to harvest. Ear number is highly dependent on plant spacing. If the plants are crowded together enough there will only be one ear or in some cases none. A plant with no ear is said to be barren. In commercial field corn the plants are crowded together enough that they average near one ear per plant. That’s needed to maximize yield per acre. Plants on the edge of the field that get more light may have two ears even at high density, that’s called the border effect.
Picking at the right time is mainly a matter of experience along with checking every couple of days as it gets close. Harvest lasts 4-5 days from earliest to latest maturing ears. Select the fullest ears first. Usually the top ear is a day or two sooner than the second ear.
The tassel is on top of the plant and sheds pollen. The silk is on the tip of the ear and receives the pollen. Ears can be seen about a 7-10 days before pollen shed starts.
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