Success with Sweet Corn

29 May Success with Sweet Corn

Summer conversations often include reminiscing about the sweetest sweet corn and juiciest tomatoes from particular farm market vendors or grandpa’s garden. If you’ve been craving the best sweet corn, now is the time to grow it.

Farmer Dan, fourth-generation farmer and co-founder of HyR BRIX^®, shares his tips on growing the sweetest crop this year.

Location, Location, Location

• FULL sun. Sweet corn loves heat, so an area in direct full sun all day is important.
• Sweet corn prefers well-drained soil. If soil is sandy plan to irrigate more often. Clay soils will benefit from the addition of gypsum to help improve soil structure.
• Sweet corn should be isolated by a distance of 700-1,000 feet OR a tasseling date of 14 days to prevent cross pollination.

Planting Tips

Planting is more critical than most people realize. Even planting depth of each seed is important.

• Prior to plating broadcast spread HyR BRIX® Sweet Corn Fertilizer throughout the entire area. HyR BRIX® fertilizers are designed to feed the soil that feeds your plants, so the entire garden area benefits.
• Soil temps must be above 50F. Temperatures lower than that increase the risk of seed rot.
• Sweet corn seed should be planted 1-1.5 inches deep. Try to keep them all at the same depth, so plants emerge uniformly. This is an important aspect of growing sweet corn that’s often overlooked.
• Seeds should be planted 8-10 inches apart within the row and rows spaced about 30 to 36″ apart.
• Sweet corn seed requires high soil moisture to germinate, so water well after planting.

Nutrition Needs

• Corn is a grass and needs high amounts of nitrogen (N). It also needs potassium (K) as much as it needs nitrogen.
• Nitrogen is critical during throughout the entire growing season, but especially critical, along with boron, during tasseling and pollination.
• Corn loves sulfur (S), zinc (Z), boron (B), and manganese (Mn), all of which are micronutrients not available in traditional garden fertilizers like, 10-10-10, 12-12-12, 19-19-19, or 20-20-20.
• I’ve formulated HyR BRIX® Sweet Corn Fertilizer to meet the high N and K demands of sweet corn and critical need for sulfur, zinc, boron, and manganese. In addition, there multiple forms of nitrogen to ensure adequate nitrogen is available during tasseling and pollination.