July 7, 1997
Most of us remember when the sweet corn bought at the grocery store or from the back of pick- up along a country road was a wonderful summer treat. But we might also remember the corn was relatively starchy and not nearly as sweet as corn we harvest from our own garden. Directions for cooking sweet corn used to read, "Bring a large kettle of water to full boil, then go to the garden, harvest your corn, clean it and get into the water a quickly as possible." My neighbors kids used to prefer to eat the corn fresh in the garden without even cooking it.
And of course you had to learn to judge when the corn was at its peak of sweetness to harvest it at the right moment. Why all this emphasis on eating corn as soon as it was ready to be harvested? To keep the sweet favor.
In warm weather sugar turns to starch and from the time the ear of corn left the plant until you ate it, all the sweetness was converting to tougher, tasteless starch. If left on the plant too long the process of becoming starch for storage of energy in the seed would continue rapidly and soon even the freshest of corn would be tough.
However, things have changed. In recent years, plant breeders have developed super sweet corn which maintains its sweetness much longer than traditional sweet corn. Some varieties have twice the sugar of standard sweet corn and can be held in the refrigerator for over a week without turning starchy.
There are currently several types of sweet corn available. Sugary hybrids are standard sweet corn varieties, such as Silver Queen and Seneca Horizon. Sugary enhanced sweet corn, also known as enhanced, EH or se, include such varieties as Kandy Korn EH. The true supersweets, also called ultrasweet, extrasweet, or shrunken, include the All-America winners Honey 'N Pearl and How Sweet It Is. Sugar Loaf is an example of synergistic or sweet-gene hybrids.
Remember, one of the advantages of both the sugar enhanced, supersweet, and synergistic sweet types is that the corn will stay fresh, both on the plant and in the refrigerator longer than standard sweet corn. Harvest can be delayed five to ten days for supersweets and three to five days for the other types.
More gardening information is available in the Virginia Gardener Newsletter.
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