We recently bought a new place and moved. We have been here now for a couple of weeks and it was time to tackle the garden. The sweet corn, (planted by the former owner)was 10-12 feet high, I have never had any that tall and I'm not sure except for feild corn that I have ever seen any that tall. So the corn was done and the few cobs left were dried down, so I chopped it all down and gave it to a neighbor for his sheep. Then I went to digging up the remaining stalks & roots to use as a base in the new compost bins. After digging up a few roots and banging the dirt off on the side of my shovel, I noticed that these corn plants had been started in "peat pots". I have never thought of starting sweet corn plants, I knew that these folks started nearly everything but not corn. They used Silver Queen and side dressed with Tripple-13 the soil was imported but he had used a lot of well rotted horse manure to build it up. I certainly will try peat pot sweet corn next year!

-- R Henderson (OR) (redgate@echoweb.net), September 19, 2001

Answers

Greetings,

Yes, we have started our sweet corn indoors in peat pots and have had good success. My husband's uncle had a produce stand and was always the first in the town to have sweet corn ready each year, and that was his secret. The seedlings have a better chance of surviving the pheasants too.

-- Charleen in WNY (harperhill@eznet.net), September 19, 2001.

We've never done it that way either, but have heard of doing it, and also of using homemade newspaper containers for starting corn. Since we had snow here mid June, and again the first week of September, I am thinking of starting lots more stuff this way next year!

-- mary (marylgarcia@aol.com), September 19, 2001.

Ive grown corn insode, in 5 gal buckets when I was 13 or so,, just to see if I could,, DAD never knew till I was eating it for supper

-- stan (sopal@net-port.com), September 19, 2001.

At the farm where I work, we grew ornamental corn in plug trays (a tray with cells that hold about a tablespoon of soil each). By doing so, we didn't feed so much corn to the local wildlife and ended up with quite the bumper crop of ornamental corn this fall! The boss says we'll do it this way every year. I may follow suit at home. I had a beastly time with chipmunks eating my kohlrabi seed this past spring, so I may try raising seedlings instead.

-- Sheryl in Me (radams@sacoriver.net), September 19, 2001.

I'm not sure you need the seed pots. Can they be sprouted instead? Soak the seeds for 24-hours, then place them apart on something like damp newspaper and cover with more damp newspaper. Keep paper just slightly damp. When the roots and sprouts are large enough, they can then be transplanted in the garden.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), September 20, 2001.