Let's get corny!

The next time you run into Blur’s Alex James, you can tell him he’s corny – and for once, he’ll probably agree. He’s proud of his homegrown sweetcorn, standing tall and ready to pick throughout August and September, his very own cornucopia. Or should that be cornutopia. You too can be proud, and you don’t need a two-hundred-acre farm to grow sweetcorn. We at Outsiding HQ want you, dear consumer, to be a-maize-ed at how easy it can be to grow your own sweetcorn, so here are some kernels of advice, with a little help from Adam. Please, lend us your ear.

Sweetcorn is one of the easiest crops you can grow, and there’s nothing quite like picking an ear straight from the plant and eating it while it’s still warm from the sun.

For the best results, sow seeds indoors on a sunny windowsill in spring and plant them outside once the risk of frost has passed and the ground outside has warmed up.

Once your seedlings are about six to eight inches tall, choose a sunny, sheltered spot and plant them in a block rather than a single row, as demonstrated by clever-clogs Alex James. Sweetcorn isn’t too fussy, but it does have an appetite, so plant it in rich, fertile soil with plenty of organic matter, and keep it well watered.

Sweetcorn relies on the wind to carry pollen between plants, so your plants will do a much better job of pollinating each other when they’re growing together. We’d say about nine or twelve plants is a minimum, planted about 40cm apart. With a little sunshine and regular watering, you should be harvesting your first sweet, juicy cobs by late summer. Just remember: the sooner you eat them, the sweeter they’ll taste. Look for the sandy-coloured hair, or silks to give it the proper name, to turn brown, and that’s when you know they’re ready to pick for dinner.

Those silk strands are doing some serious work, by the way. Each silk is linked to a single kernel, so a well-pollinated cob is basically a team effort between thousands of tiny threads and the wind.

From a garden planning perspective, it will need a bit of space. Think of sweetcorn as the friendly giant of the vegetable patch; It takes up a bit more room than other edibles, and its height means it can shade out surrounding plants. The idea of walking through a clump of sweetcorn like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams is appealing, but most of us don’t have that scale of green space, so grown against a wall or fence, in a block rather than a row, is ideal for a small to medium-sized garden. But the harvest is worth the spatial intrusion if you’re a real corn lover, and each plant should give you one or two ears. If you plant it, they will come, and then, corngratulations! You’re basically a farmer.

Do you grow sweetcorn in your plot? Let us know and share your corny recipes in the comments, and keep up with our latest episodes of Outsiding here.