sweetcorn distance

[iainhawk]

Hi there

i know you should grow sweetcorn in a block to aid local pollination and that you should not grow blocks of F1 or supersweets alongside other varieties. is it really true that the resultant cobs from unintentional crosses are often starchy and horrible to eat?- has anyone done this and had a bad crop?

my questions is how far apart should your blocks of different sweetcorn be. I guess that it depends on the predominant wind direction but this will never be constant.

i was intending to grow 2 blocks of different corn approximately 10m apart and not upwind (i.e. to the side)- would this be enough?

cheers..

[Lesley Jay]

The advice is not to grow supersweet varieties with standard varieties as the cross pollination will cancel out the sugar enhanced flavour of the supersweet variety. However when growing sweetcorn on an allotment site your block of sweetcorn will never be far away from your neighbours block of sweetcorn (variety unknown!). So I would imagine 10m is far enough.