Sweet corn: a truly All-American summer treat

By Kathy Hatfield
Gardening Columnist

Back to Gardening Articles List

A popular riddle when I was a kid went like this: "First you throw away the outside, then you cook the inside, then you eat the outside then you throw away the inside. What is it?" The answer, of course, is an ear of corn. And what could be a better treat for the Fourth of July than a freshly picked ear of corn, cooked to perfection, then buttered and salted to your taste?

Corn is a member of the grass family, one of the largest and most important of the entire plant kingdom. This family includes not only many important food plants, such as rice, wheat, barley, oats, sugar cane and millet, but also many ornamentals and horticultural favorites, bamboo and lawn grasses.

The tassels on a corn plant are actually clusters of male flowers. Each flower produces many grains of pollen; it has been estimated that a single corn plant can produce over 15 million grains of pollen! The pollen grains are transported by the wind, and at least some of them will land on the corn silk, which is part of the female flower. If the corn is successfully pollinated, the kernels will develop. Since corn is wind-pollinated, any corn growing nearby that is maturing at about the same time can pollinate your plot of corn, whether it's the same variety or not. Often this will make a difference in the taste of the corn. Field corn growing near your sweet corn may give you tough, starchy kernels, rather than sweet ones. A large plot of corn will have a better chance of being successfully pollinated than a smaller one. If you have room for only a small plot of corn, planting it in a small block rather than one long row will result in better pollination and fuller ears.

Corn likes a good, rich soil and plenty of water--usually in the range of 12 to 24 inches during its growing season. If you see the leaves begin to curl lengthwise, you know the plant is water stressed. Like most grasses, corn will benefit from the addition of nitrogen in the form of compost or well-rotted manure.

Of the numerous varieties of corn that are available to the home gardener, there are standard forms and hybrids. The hybrids tend to be more vigorous. They grow faster with more uniform growth and their yield is generally more ears per plant than the standard forms. To make matters more confusing, there are now super sweet, all sweet, and sugar-enhanced types, with more varieties being added to the seed catalogs each year.

When choosing corn to grow in your garden, it's essential to select one that will mature well within the number of days in our growing season. That's about 138 to 150 days. Corn grows best at about 75 degrees F. If the average day and night temperatures are less than that, the corn will not mature as quickly as stated on the seed packet. Check with county extension agents or your neighbors who have grown corn successfully for help in choosing a good variety.

Corn is our number one field crop. In the United States, we grow over 9 billion bushels of corn every year. Although more than half of this goes to feed livestock, an estimated 540 million bushels are made into high fructose corn syrup, used to sweeten everything from carbonated beverages, snack foods and peanut butter to cereals and yogurt.

But corn is used in the production of many nonfood items too. Besides its frequent use in packaged cake mixes, corn starch is used in manufacturing paper products, pharmaceuticals, gypsum wallboard and sparkplugs (in the porcelain part). In the production of rubber tires, it is sprinkled on the molds to prevent the rubber from sticking. Cornstarch gives the "stickiness" to many types of glue, pastes and other adhesives.

In pioneer days, corncobs were made into tool handles, hair curlers, pipes or jelly. Today, because they are very absorbent and relatively dust-free, ground corncobs are used in many cosmetics. They are also used to clean logs when refurbishing log homes and to massage damaged limbs during physical therapy. Resins made from corncobs are useful as solvents for the paint and varnish industry.

We also use corn to fuel our vehicles. Each year, about 630 million bushels are made into ethanol, which is added to gasoline to make it burn cleaner and more efficiently.

It's probably impossible for us to go through a day without using corn in some form.