Only certain varieties of sweet corn will have their flavor affected by a nearby field corn planting. These are the ones labeled "super-sweet," "sugar-enhanced," etc. That's why some of the advice above is incorrect -- though it would be true for "ordinary" vegetables (and non-enhanced varieties of sweet corn, for that matter). You could try timing your planting to avoid cross-pollination, but I wouldn't rely on starting indoors; direct-sown corn catches up quickly to transplanted. Or simply plant a variety of sweet corn that doesn't become starchy if cross-pollinated. Some people prefer these; their disadvantage is that the corn must be eaten very quickly after harvest, while the enhanced varieties can keep their sugar for days. Here is a link that might be useful: Sweet corn

I thought that probably was the case, but wasn't sure because it wouldn't surprise me if some seed company named a variety "Triple Sweet" just to confuse us all. The seed companies do stuff like that all the time. I've grown both Kandy Korn (an SE type)and Serendipity (a Triplesweet or Synergystic type), and probably even in the same year and had no problem with them crossing because those types don't have to be isolated from one another. I've also grown Honey Select. I like all three, but Serendipity was my favorite in terms of flavor. Spacing is tricky, as Scott noted, because of variations in soil and climate. The better the quality of your soil, in terms of it being highly fertile, the closer you can plant and still get a crop. When I planted in raised beds, I planted the plants (any variety, no matter the type) 12" apart in all directions. That was my choice because I wanted the most ears possible and I got a good yield because the soil in the raised bed was highly enriched with tons of organic matter like compost and cow manure. However, with closely-spaced plants, your ears likely will be smaller. When I plant at grade-level, I use slightly farther spacing, maybe 15-18" in-between plants in the same row, but still with rows spaced about 12-15" apart. I'd rather plant more plants and get more ears, even if they are smaller, than plant further apart and get fewer but larger ears. That is because all my corn has to be planted inside a fenced area with a 7' tall fence to keep the deer out of it. If I could just plow up a section of land that wasn't fenced and plant corn without losing it all to the deer, I'd follow the recommended spacing of both rows and distance between plants in the rows. I usually don't plant the second variety, the one with the longer days-to-maturity, until the first variety is about knee-high. There's a reason for that and it is to keep them from pollinating at the same time. Sometimes, when you try to use staggered planting dates, the corn planted later is growing in warmer soil so it "catches" up with the corn planted earlier, especially if there's just a couple of weeks difference in their days-to-maturity numbers, which are just estimates anyway. Even though you don't have to isolate the two varieties you're growing (great job of doing your research and figuring that out, by the way!), you might want to stagger the planting dates a little bit anyway....by maybe 3 or 4 weeks or by planting the second corn when the first is knee-high. Why? Well, how much corn do you want at one time? Will you be canning or freezing it? If not, will you be harvesting more than you can eat in a reasonable time frame? By staggering the planting times, you spread out the harvest. By the time you're through harvesting and eating the Kandy Korn, your later planting of Serendipity will be about ready to pick. That's what you call perfect timing. I am growing 4 varieties this year and probably will plant two early (in different fenced areas) and then two later on once the early varieties are knee-high (in the same two fenced areas about 3 weeks later). Even though I'm prepared to freeze or can a lot of it, I don't want to have to harvest and process 4 kinds of corn all at once. Dawn

I've just begun reading that book. I never got a chance to start earlier in the year but finally broke down and made time a week or so ago. (I usually save most of my reading for late fall/winter when I'm not up to my eyeballs in chores.) I'm only a third of the way through the book but am love, love, loving it! If only I could keep my eyes open longer while reading in bed, I'd be further along. I can't wait to read her take on flour corn. Thanks for the link to her site. I didn't realize she had one (or I did and forgot). So, George, have you experimented any with flour corns yet? I'd love to hear your take on it. I remember you mentioning wanting to try parching. Diane

Johnny, We would put up electric fencing if we had to, I think, but we don't have to because we have a chicken coop and chicken run that are predator proof NOW. They weren't always predator proof, although we thought they were. Nothing will find any errors you made in building a coop like the raccoons will. Our biggest problem is if a chicken does not return to the coop at nightfall after a day of free ranging. The odds are it will not survive until morning because something roaming around at night will get it. Our first coop had a skylight (made of a clear greenhouse fiberglass panel) to get more light into the coop. An owl crashed through the skylight. Lesson learned. Our current coops have windows, not skylights. Oh, and the owl was injured so we had to move it to an unused chicken run and give it time to heal before we released it. I like owls in general but not when they are in the chicken coop or chicken run. In our first year here, raccoons would climb up on the patio furniture sitting on the front porch and would knock on our windows wanting to be fed. Then, if you opened the front door to chase them off, they'd panic and climb the porch pillars. I suspect somebody in our neighborhood was feeding them. That was in 1999. I still thought they were cute then but didn't feed them. Now, many garden wars and chicken wars later, I don't like them at all, and have learned they are quite vicious. We run them off when we see them, but we don't see nearly as many as we used to. A bad outbreak of distemper that was very widespread on the Texas side of the Red River a few years ago seems to have wiped out a lot of them. We used to see them every single night in our yard. Now we see them maybe once a month, though there's no telling how many are out late at night that we don't see. We see their tracks more than we see them these days, and I'm okay with that. With the Red River currently in flood stage (incomprehensible to me that we are seeing flooding again because we can go 10 years or more in between river floods but the last two years all we get are recurring floods), I expect we will see more wildlife because they've had to come up out of the bottomlands. Yesterday while working in the garden, a whitetail deer stood behind a cedar tree in our neighbor's pasture about 20' from my garden gate and carried on and had a fit trying to chase me away. It blew air out its nostrils, it paced, it stood and stared a hole through me. I just kept telling it to go away because it wasn't coming into the garden. Eventually it left, but it stayed around far too long. We wanted to live in an area with wildlife when we moved here, but in a lot of ways, we got a lot more than we bargained for. It's too late now. We aren't leaving. Dawn