April is an ideal time for one of the last vegetable sowing jobs of the spring, and a new one on me, sweetcorn.
Sweetcorn, as it turns out, is not really like many other plants in terms of how it grows, how it pollinates and how you harvest it.
Corn, while grown across the world today, is native to central America and has been grown by the native Americans alongside other vegetables for thousands of years across what is today Mexico and the USA. It was the descendants of those native Americans who, during An Gorta Mór in Ireland, sent corn and meal to help feed those facing starvation and malnutrition. Some of that food aid was stored off the main road between Malin Town and Carndonagh.
The corn I’m sowing is a variety called Golden Bantam from a packet of organic kernels I picked up at the Organic Centre in Rossinver, County Leitrim last autumn.
Sweetcorn, as it turns out, is not really like many other plants in terms of how it grows, how it pollinates and how you harvest it.
Corn, while grown across the world today, is native to central America and has been grown by the native Americans alongside other vegetables for thousands of years across what is today Mexico and the USA. It was the descendants of those native Americans who, during An Gorta Mór in Ireland, sent corn and meal to help feed those facing starvation and malnutrition. Some of that food aid was stored off the main road between Malin Town and Carndonagh.
The corn I’m sowing is a variety called Golden Bantam from a packet of organic kernels I picked up at the Organic Centre in Rossinver, County Leitrim last autumn.
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NewsTranscript
00:00So today what I'm going to be doing is planting up some sweet corn and I have some kernels here
00:17which I'll show you up close in a moment and just a wee update to you on the other vegetables
00:23and salad things I'm going to be planting up a few lettuces as well some seedlings today but here we
00:31have a few weeks ago we planted the purple broccoli these are from organic seeds and then we have the
00:38green broccoli as well which has come up great too and you can also see a purple tinge I'll just bring
00:45that up close in a moment but here we have the Brussels sprouts all up and the spring onions as
00:50well no sign of the carrots yet but there's time yet it's early spring still or it's suppose we're
00:59heading towards late spring but you can see here just see that little purple tinge of some of these
01:04these are purple broccoli and here we have the sweet corn kernels as you can see they're quite
01:12they just look like popcorn or something like that they're dried kernels and these are from the organic
01:23center in Ireland and they're a golden bantam is the variety and it says so from April to June and
01:37harvest from July to October I've never grown corn before so this will be a bit of an adventure for
01:43me and what I'll do is I will get started now on preparing the pots for it so even though I've never
01:55grown corn before I've done a bit of research and it seems to be a consensus that you're better off
02:04starting these in pots they're not frost tolerant and we could have a frost for an hour a month or so
02:10here in Ireland so you're better off growing them in pots first and from what I've read is you can grow
02:26multiple little kernels in the one pot until they're about bigger and then
02:32pot them on then and sweet corn are both every plant is male and female so and it's one pollinated as
02:44well so it's actually the one blowing through there's male tassels on a plant and then they fertilize
02:54and there's male flowers and then they fertilize the female flowers which are the ears if you've seen
02:59corn you know about ears and that's where you get the big cobs of corn um now another thing that I
03:10found out is that you should never plant them just in a single row because they need to be planted in
03:16a grid pattern so probably need at least 16 four by four in a square a patch to get them to pollinate
03:26so although the corn will grow if you if it's not pollinating then you won't get the big corns
03:33for the big ears of corn so it's quite a fascinating plant uh it's not really like anything I've ever
03:45grown before and now I'm just putting these kernels here and putting them laying them on the soil
03:56and then we'll cover that by one centimeter of compost and they're very very dry I don't know if anyone
04:06has any advice for why you should soak these first or not or I'm sure once we bottom one of them they'll be fine
04:18we'll get up the moisture then I'm putting about five in each one and I'll do one more as well
04:29the other thing I learned about corn is when it's ready to harvest you should cook it right away
04:46once you do get or if you do get years of corn then you should probably cook it the same day
05:06all right that's them done there so all we need to do now is just over just gently pat that down
05:14and I'm going to grow these on I'll keep them in the unheated greenhouse of behind me and
05:24just give them a good bath and water now so that can soak up the water and that's basically them
05:35we'll see how they get on now I'm planning they dig a patch up see just here beside the wee raised bed
05:44patch of ground and they'll be planting these on there in a grid pattern so they'll be four by four
05:52five by five if they come up of course they might not germinate so we'll have that problem but that's the
06:01plan for now the thought of digging it's not doing it this weekend and that's them ready to go so
06:09I'll just move them now over to a water bath and let them soak up the water and all our beautiful day
06:15here so it's a great day for getting stuff done in the garden and great too for all the plants to see
06:26this one come on up
06:27you