Sweet Corn Earlibird Vegetable Seeds

There are two main types of Sweet Corn; supersweet and standard. They both produce a beautiful tasting cob covered in Sweetcorn. Sweetcorn seeds grow best when grown in blocks rather than rows.

Sweetcorn is delicious, especially so when it's freshly picked and steamed in its husk on the BBQ before being smothered in butter and topped with a generous sprinkling of black pepper. Mini sweetcorn varieties are a good choice if you're new to growing sweet corn. Unlike the larger varieties they don't need to be grown in blocks and you should get five or six cobs from each plant.

Sweet corn enjoys a sunny, sheltered position and may require staking individually if exposed.

Sow sweet corn seeds individually, 1 inch deep, into 3 inch pots or growing cells from April onwards. Germination normally occurs within 10 to 14 days. Sweetcorn doesn't like having its roots disturbed, so fibre pots which can be planted out are perfect.

Seedlings can be planted out when they are about 15cm tall and all danger of frost has passed. Harden them off gradually for a week or two before planting them out at 45 - 60cm intervals Water in thoroughly and keep the young plants watered as they establish.

To encourage pollination of the silks, female flowers, tapping the tassels or male flowers, helps pollen to fall pollinating the flowers and produce cobs.Poor pollination leads to missing kernels in the cob rows.

A good guide to the ripeness of the sweetcorn cobs is the shrivelling browning of the silks at the end of the cob. Squeezing kernels is another good test to how ripe the cobs are, a watery liquid suggests unripe, milky liquid suggests ripe to harvest, and a thick dough like substance suggests that the cobs have been left too long and are over-ripe.