Possible to grow different varieties of corn?

[Alison]

I think it's just he supersweet ones that warn you but I have no idea if it REALLY matters of not.

[Eyren]

Remember that with sweetcorn, what you eat is the actual seed, whose characteristics are affected by the genes of both parents. And the F1 supersweet varieties require a specific combination of parents - anything else in the mix can cause those characteristics to be lost. Non-F1 varieties perhaps aren't as affected by crossing, as they are more genetically varied in the first place.

In crops where you are eating the flesh that develops around the seed (e.g. tomatoes, squash, runner beans), that flesh comes from the female parent only, so crossing doesn't matter.

I knew there was a reason we spent long biology lessons copying diagrams of plant reproduction and cross-sections of fruits...

[Gwyndy]

Good explanation Eyren - thank you. (I did history instead of biology!!)

[Eyren]

I think this was before we chose our exam options at fourteen, back in the days when science was still three separate subjects and we did cookery and needlework, not Design & Technology

[Raindancer411]

Sweetcorn - cross pollination

Hi All, I have planted the last of my F1 type of sweetcorn but never seem to have much luck with them coming up. Got 6 so far and hoping that I get a few more. If I dont get that many, can I sow another type? I remember reading some where that you should keep the types seperate.

[bluemoon]

You only need to keep them separate if they fall into different caregories. Some are called things like 'supersweets' (some seed companies have different names for the same thing though, such as 'sugar enhanced') which, as the name suggests, are sweeter than the usual types. Normally cross pollination doesn't matter with your veg unless you're wanting to save the seeds for next year, but with sweetcorn, because it's the seed that you actually eat, then cross pollination can cause a loss of flavour if the sweeter types cross with the bog-standard types.

[King Carrot]

Are the supersweets necessarily sweeter than non supersweet/enhanced varieties?

I thought that the super sweets or enhanced only ones held higher level of sweetness for longer after harvesting, giving them an effective shelf life for commercial purposes where as the more standard type quickly turn from very, very sweet to starch, hence us gardeners preferring to grow that type and then rushing to them in the pot asap to get the full sweetness?

[bluemoon]

That's a good point King Carrot, I really don't know, I don't often grow the supersweet type, but you're probably right as I haven't noticed much improvement in flavour in those that I have tried. Sadly once harvested sweetcorn doesn't last the hour here so I couldn't comment on the storage capacity of any of them. But it could well be that we're talking about a loss of flavour over time rather than an immediate difference.

[SarzWix]

I've put these two threads together to make the information easier to find

I didn't know the reason for keeping supersweets seperate, glad I read it I'll just have to do a little rejigging of my plot I think, because I have Mini-pop, Red Strawberry and a big sweetcorn to fit in somewhere...! I think the Mini-pop and Red Strawberry should be ok together though, as the Mini-pop doesn't need pollinating at all.

[Demeter]

I wondered if anyone had any comments on Donna's germination rate? Mum says she can't get it to germinate at all. I sowed 28 seeds on 1 April and now have 19 seedlings, perhaps I am being unrealistic to expect 28 seedlings!! (I thought one of the benefits of pricey F1 seeds was good germination rate - I mean, £3+ for a small number of seeds is even harder to swallow if the rotten things don't get started in the first place!)

I'm trying to decide whether to hang on and see if any more germinate or whether to begin gently hardening them off. The tallest are growing like stink and will need to be planted out within the next couple of weeks I reckon - before they take over the house - yikes - I wasn't planning to get them out until mid-May at the earliest...

They are an early variety Honey bantam (Sweetcorn : Honey Bantam Bicolour (30) F1 (Seeds)) and apparently mature witihin 78 days which may explain the quick start!

[bluemoon]

Anyone who's ever had the misfortune to read genetics has probably done the most boring experiment ever. The idea, if you can stay awake that long, is to get a corn cob that is the result of cross pollination of two visually different types, a yellow one, with plump seeds, say, crossed with a purple one with wrinkled seeds. The resultant cob has a mixture of yellow and purple seeds, each of which colour may show plump or wrinkled types. Then they make you draw up a chart of the numbers of each of the 4 types and from that work out which traits are dominant and which recessive. It's usually obvious at a glance, but they make you do the count accurately, presumably so the tutors can spend two hours in the pub while you're being kept out of mischief. The point in saying this is that pollination does have an effect on the cob, and that each individual seed could be different from its neighbours if it crosses with something of a different variety.

[SarzWix]

I sowed 15 last year and got 11, they were brand new seeds of Northern Extra Sweet. The year before I sowed the same number of Swift and got 12. I put them in the propagator, in the porch. Haven't sown this years yet, still about 4 weeks of frost here