Garden
Growing Sweet Corn in Our In-Ground Garden
Sweet corn is one of those crops that changes the look of the garden quickly. It starts as little green rows that don't look like much, and before long the stalks are tall enough to make an entire section of the garden feel different. We planted ours directly in our in-ground garden and watered it right along with everything else. Over the next few months, those small rows turned into tall stalks, ears started forming, and eventually we had corn ready to pick. And once we harvested what we wanted, even the leftover plants didn't go to waste.
Starting with little rows
We direct sow our sweet corn. There's no reason for us to start it inside — it goes straight into the garden once the soil has warmed up, which for us in North Texas means spring is well underway.
We plant ours together in a block of rows rather than one long row along the edge.
At first it isn't much to look at. Small seedlings, a lot of bare dirt, and rows you have to look for. Then the warm weather shows up and it takes off faster than almost anything else we grow.
Watering and letting it grow
The corn gets watered with the same soaker-hose setup we run everywhere else in the garden. We lay the hoses down the rows when we plant and leave them there for the season, so watering the corn is just part of watering everything else.
After that, most of the work is waiting. The stalks gain height in a hurry, and at some point you walk out and realize you can't see over that part of the garden anymore.
When the ears started showing up
Once the stalks were tall, the ears started forming along the sides and the silks came out at the top of each one.
That's the point where it stopped being a green section of the garden and started feeling like a crop we were actually going to harvest.
From there we mostly watched. The silks dry and turn brown as the ears fill out, and that's the sign we go by before we start pulling back a husk to check an ear.
From little seedlings to this
The photo at the top of this post is the corn later in the season, with the tomatoes staked up on the other side of the path.
It's hard to line that up with the first picture of little rows and bare dirt. Same spot, same soaker hoses, a few months apart.
Harvest time
When the ears were ready, we picked them and loaded the basket into the back of the truck to haul out of the garden. Once enough ears were ready, picking turned into an evening job everybody could help with.
We ate some fresh and put plenty away for later. If you want to see how we handled the harvest once it came inside, I shared our process for cutting and freezing fresh corn in our freezer corn post.
And the stalks didn't go to waste
After we finished picking, we pulled and cut the remaining corn plants out of the garden and hauled them out to the Longhorns.
They did not need any convincing. The stalks and leaves were gone in short order, and clearing that section of the garden turned into a pretty entertaining part of the evening.
Would we grow sweet corn again?
Yes.
It takes up a good bit of room, but there's something satisfying about rows that small turning into stalks that tall, and then into food we could eat that week and freeze for later.
Like everything else we grow, we'll take what we learned from this season with us the next time we plant.
We'll grow it again. There aren't many things better than walking into the garden, picking dinner, and knowing exactly where it came from.
