Planting sweet corn at home is one of the most suitable plants for your home garden. As the name implies it can also be called sugar corn. It is also a variety of maize with high sugar content.
Apart from its high nutritious content, it can also serve as food for our domestic animals; hence, its usefulness to man and livestock cannot be overemphasized. They also have a monoecious nature (meaning that you can find the male and female flowers on the same plant) which helps their pollination (pollination is essential for the flowers to be fertilized in order to produce seeds).
In most countries they are planted on a large scale, however, due to its high demand and usefulness it can also be home grown and harvested within our own surroundings.
Related: Learn about Growing Corn Stages Step By Step
Why plant sweet corn at home?
Corn seeds are generally warm loving weather plants that can be grown annually, which makes it easy to be planted and it can be successfully grown at home and cultivated easily. It is an annual crop that can be planted in early, mid and late seasons and also comes with a variety of colors.
The seeds can be gotten from the market or from previously harvested ones. They are also economical to grow. Once you have your corn seeds available, the next thing is to go about preparing the seeds and garden for planting.
How do I prepare my seeds?
The first thing to do is to soak all the seeds overnight at room temperature, after which the water can then be poured out and the pre-soaked seeds set aside and ready for planting. The soaking in water is to help the seeds soften the hardness of the corn seeds which is one of the primary and principal things to be done in the planting process.
Read also: How To Prepare Corn Seeds For Planting
How to plant and grow the sweet corn
1) Ensure that the soil is warm enough before planting because sweet corn does not germinate well in cold soil and this can prevent them from sprouting and cause the seeds to rot. Also when the soil temperature is warm enough, the plants grow well.
2) When you want to plant the sweet corn it’s essential that the soil be prepared ahead few weeks before they will be planted. They thrive and grow well in soil that is rich in fertility especially soil that is rich in nitrogen and other essential nutrients, hence the need to prepare the soil ahead to increase the soil nutrients and help the soil fertility.
You can apply your manure and other fertilizers especially those that are rich in nitrogen into the soil before planting. This will ensure optimal growth of the sweet corn as soon as they are planted in the soil.
3) When putting your sweet corn seed into the soil ensure it does not go deep down into the earth, at least an inch deep into the soil and they should be planted in rows.
4) Its best advised to plant sweet corn directly instead of transplanting them. Although some people may prefer to transplant, however this is to avoid undue stress and pressure on the plants root that is most likely to occur during transplanting.
5) When choosing your space for planting the sweet corn in your home ensure that the soil is well draining and must be able to retain water because they are high water consuming plants.
6) Corn seeds are generally wind pollinated so there will be a need to choose the most spacious part of your garden so that the plants can be well spaced and also to ensure correct pollination of the plants which will ensure a greater chance of your plants producing viable full ears.
Read also: How To Harvest Corn Seeds For Next Year
Tips to ensure maximum growth
After the sweet corn has been planted, the next thing to be done is to monitor the plants for proper growth and germination.
1) For optimal growth of sweet corn they need to be watered regularly because sweet corn tends to need a lot of water for their growth.
2) Watch out for pests and weeds. In the case of weeds, be careful not to pull out the young roots of the plants when weeding your garden.
3) Ensure adequate spacing when the young plants start to grow.
4) Fertilizers can also be applied in the case of low soil fertility.
Conclusion
In this article, I discussed how to grow sweet corn at home. I hope you find the article useful. Let me know if you have any questions about growing sweet corn at home.
