Corn is a plant with as many uses as their are varieties of it. You can grow corn for animal feed, for food for yourself, or even as a base component to make a variety of other things. Corn can also be refined into sweeteners (though we don’t recommend doing this at home). If you live in the US corn is a staple you’re common with, but it’s also inescapable as corn syrup can be found in everything.
Corn Details:
- Family: Poaceae
- Growing Season: Spring
- Growing Zones: 3 through 10
- Spacing: 6 inches (15 cm) apart, in rows 24 inches (60 cm) apart
- Seed to Harvest time: 70-85 days
- Indoor Starting: Not recommended
- Earliest Planting: After danger of last frost
- Watering: Water when soil is dry, keeping soil moist, but never wet. Do not over water. Corn does well with drip irrigation when available, but this is usually impracticable for large crops.
- Sunlight Requirements: Full sun
- Planting: plant seeds 1 inch deep keeping proper spacing in mind. Corn will tear through fertilizer so plant in a well fertilized soil with a good mix of organic compost.
- Weeding: Corn out competes most weeds, but weekly weeding is still recommended.
- Harvesting: Harvest corn when the silk on the ears has dried and browned. Harvest by griping corn firmly and twisting while pulling away from the stalk.
- Known Pests: Corn earworms, trim and discard infested silk or spray with mineral oil. Corn smut, once infected corn can only be discarded, but corn smut is still edible, so there is no real loss if you enjoy mushrooms.
More About Corn
Corn is grown for a lot of reasons, but chiefly among them is its ability to be kept for long time as dry kernel. The plant it easy to grow and easy to propagate as you get so many seeds from each ear. Fresh corn has a variety of uses in the kitchen, but dry corn can be ground down to cornmeal and used similar to how flour would be. Dry corn also makes excellent animal feed that, if stored properly, can be kept for a very long time.
The major downsides to corn are that they take a lot of nutrients from the soil and take up a lot of space. Your typical stalk of corn will yield between 2 and 4 ears, but other varieties are more prolific. Corn also leaves a lot of organic material behind that isn’t edible and needs to be composted. Corn is a good thing to grow if you have extra space for it, but we wouldn’t recommend it on smaller plots for miniature homesteads.
Corn Tasting and Cooking Notes
Corn has a rather distinct taste for a grain. Fresh corn is juicy and has a milk flavor that goes well with savory foods. Corn pairs great with salt and fats, so you find ti being used in similar flavor profiles to other high starch vegetables.
Corn meal loses some of the distinct corn flavor notes, but allows for the production of corn chips, corn breads, and corn meal based coatings that are all rather mild and pleasant tasting with a simple but inviting flavor.
Feed corn, or what we grow for animals, has been bred for high yield and not flavor. Feed corn tastes bad and really shouldn’t be consumed by people. It can be, but it’s not good eating by any means.
Corn can be used in hundreds of recipes. In the US we often enjoy corn on the cob, corn off the cob, creamed corn, corn bread, and corn chips. In Mexican cuisine corn is used for tortillas, chips, breadings, salsa, and bases for more complex dishes.
Corn husks can also be used as organic wrappers for cooking with as they withstand heat well and keep crumbly food together while it cooks.
Should I Grow Corn In My Garden?
If you really like corn, go for it, but if you’re short on space and have even slightly neutral feelings we would recommend skipping corn altogether. Corn can take up a lot space and really deplete soil fast. It’s also surprisingly low yield for the amount of room it takes up. If you have the extra space and you know how much you’re going to use, it can be an easy addition to your garden so long as you make sure to rotate your crops and take care of your soil. As a final note, corn crossbreeds very easily, so you need to keep your corn varieties separated or only grow one type per season to avoid ruining the flavor and future seed production potential from your crop.