For me sweet corn is ruined! Can’t stand all this super sweet stuff the local farm stands all offer in my area. I still like regular sweet corn strains like Butter N Sugar and Golden Jubilee the best. The rest taste like candy they are so sweet!
Grew Golden Jubilee for a few years but the coons in my neighborhood found me out and destroyed the last crop I grew.
Seems everyone loves the supersweets so must be me. I also hate young tender ears and prefer to pick them when most would consider them past their prime.
My kids grew up Kandy Korn, because that’s what I grew in the garden, all those years. Wife would can it so we would have enough until next harvest season. Kandy Korn is yellow hybrid sweet corn variety SE (F1).
The modern ‘supersweets’ (and etc.) are too much for my tastes. Any of the old ‘Butter and Sugar’ were sweet enough, and my absolute favorite was good ol’ Golden Bantam as long as it was that day fresh- it tasted like ‘corn’ was supposed to taste! Silver Queen at the end of a good hot Summer was a treat, but where I grew up, it was as likely to happen as Eggplant. Heck, even the old Abenaki Flint corn I grow for grain tastes pretty good as boiling ears for the 3-4 days it’s in the ‘milk’ stage.
Several years ago, I was looking for a open polinated supersweet sweet corn. Of course, all the supersweets are hybrid. I finally located a supersweet that had been stabolized a few seasons in Hawaii. It is their Hawaiian super-sweet #9.
I ordered two packs at $2 each and planted in 30 inch rows, 12 between seeds.
It grew great, 9 feet tall, 1 or two ears per stalk and I thought tasted just right. My wife likes sweeter corn than I do.
Since then, I have selected and kept my seeds, replanting several years and it is a very stable “open polinated” sweet corn. I normaly keep two quart jars full of the corn seed, one in the refer and one on the shelf in the barn.
Picture of the wife and a friend beside the corn.
Hybrid is variable meaning it does not come back true from seed. Caveat that some companies label open pollinated seed as hybrid so people won’t save seed. Open pollinated seed can be saved year to year but keep a large enough population so it does not become too inbred. With corn, a minimum of 100 stalks per year (or a breeding program backcrossing to ancestors) would be required.
Corn rapidly devolves into non-productive plants with unreliable production if it becomes inbred. Continual selection can counter the effects. It takes both time and effort to avoid difficulties.
FarmGirl; I ordered the seed corn from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I bought two packs of about 120 kernels each for $2 each. I am in mid-Missouri zone 6b, so I think it would grow well in your climate. I can send you some of mine if you wish. Send a message. I am doing a germination test now.
Melon; Hybred does mean that it will not reproduce true to form, until it has gone through enough cycles. If I remember correctly, the extension service of Univ of Hawaii reproduced it 5 seasons and I have 3 more. It is a great corn, in my opinion. I have always liked saving my own seeds. I think that the seed adapts to my soil and climate and grows better than the seeds I buy that are grown somewhere else in the world.
Charlie
Most hybrid seeds are, F1 hybrid, which basically means that the plants that grow from the seeds will not produce seeds that grow like the plant that the F1 seeds came from. The plants that grow from the F1 hybrid plants, would then produce F2 hybrid seeds, only if the F1 hybrid were to be pollinated by the same pollen parent that the F1 seeds creating plant was pollinated by, then would come the F3 hybrid seeds, and then the F4 hybrid seeds, then when the F5 seeds are created, F5 seeds should create a permanently changed new variety.
I used to run sweet corn trials. Did it for 30 Years. Sweetness is one element of organoleptic enjoyment. There are other elements in sweet corn, and there are many different preferences among sweet corn consumers. I knew the folks who bred Mirai sweet corn and it was truly among the sweetest varieties I’ve eaten. They had several breeding lines but not all were named and released. However, I think the sweetest variety I ever ate was an older white sh2 variety called ‘How Sweet It Is’. It was like eating table sugar to me. Hardly any starchiness or corn flavor. Very susceptible to cold souls so you had to wait until June to plant it in northern Illinois. I don’t know if it is still available or not. I retired 12 years ago and haven’t kept up with sweet corn trends.
who knew…