Garden Season: Super Sweet Corn Varieties

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Photo courtesy of Stokes Seeds
Hybrid super sweet corn varieties from Stokes.

Spring’s bright march steals northward, with shining columns of nodding yellow daffodils and cheerful squadrons of chirping birds heralding its regal approach. As the winter-chilled soil thaws and March’s soaking curtain of rain abates, it’s time to turn the slumbering earth once again and start to sow the coming summer’s riches.

Picnic lovers cheered when the first “extra sweet” corn varieties were introduced a few years back. And competition being what it is, a large number of the sugary cultivars were soon being offered, with many of them widely promoted in the press. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, except that with quantity came confusion: Some cultivars needed to be isolated from others, some had a poor germination rate, and some would sprout at 55° F while others needed soil 10° warmer. So, when deciding what to plant in my own garden this year, I began to look into the similarities and differences. As a result, here in plenty of time for corn planting across most of the nation is the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Super-Sweet Corn.

Currently, there are four major types of sweeter-than-normal corn available: the original shrunken-gene variety, the exotic-gene hybrid, the heterozygous cultivars, and the homozygous types. The shrunken gene (named after the shriveled look it imparts to seeds) is usually abbreviated “sh2 “. A recessive gene, it was first incorporated into sweet corn varieties at the University of Illinois back in the 1950’s — which accounts for such names as Illini Extra Sweet and Illini Chief.

  • Published on Mar 1, 1983
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