Sweetcorn

... Ah now, where was I? Oh yes...

Today I continued clearing the vegetable plots including the spent sweetcorn, or maize. We had a bumper crop this year, even though I sowed it later than usual. I couldn't get hold of the variety called 'Lark' and grew 'Goldcrest' instead which I had not grown before. I sowed them in modules and planted them out when they were about 4 inches high. 100% germination too. They took off quickly once in the ground and the plants grew to 8 feet in height. 

I planted out 56 plants in a block, each plant one foot apart in either direction. That many plants in just a four foot wide section of the plot. Nearly every plant produced two bright yellow cobs which were very sweet indeed. We were having one each most days, cooked more or less as soon as they were picked to retain the sweetness. Simply boiled for about 20 minutes. No salt nor butter, just the cob. We had them after dinner, where dessert normally goes (we rarely have dessert after dinner). Visitors went away with some too.

No more freshly picked sweetcorn until next summer. It was time to clear away the plants. Most of the corn seen in fields at this time of the year are combined for silage to feed cattle over the winter, or for bio-fuel. Or perhaps, as with the farmer up the road, a maize maze - part of his annual pumpkin patch event. Mine were destined for the compost heap. I chop up each of the stems into 3 inch lengths with secateurs before adding to the compost. (That's 56 plants at 8 feet in length, cut into 3 inch segments = 1792 secateur cuts, should you be interested). It only took an hour or so. Nothing new in mindfulness. The few missed cobs, past eating, were given to the chickens.

The stumps of the sweetcorn plants. Our ram
was looking on while I worked.