Suzie, I like Earlysun Glow. It is small and has smaller ears, but I think %wise the grain is deeper (smaller cob)than other corns. I buy mine at a feed and seed store. I am sure the price has gone this year, but should be no more than 3 or 4 dollars for much more than you will use in one planting. You can but it almost anywhere.

You dont have a lot of room for corn because it needs to be planted in in a 4 row group. I plant mine closer than I should because it is a space hog.

Larry

Larry, thank you. I guess I didn't do my homework very well because I didn't know about the 4 row planting. Hmmmmm. That would take a lot of space out of a garden this small. I got a very strange look from Larry when I told him and asked him if he could rototill up another area for corn. He mumbled something about maybe no corn this year. But he's the corn lover so we'll see. Edmond has a nice farm store that might have the seed, and if not Guthrie might have it.

Thank you again!
Suzie

Suzie,

I plant Early Sunglow sweet corn every year for my early corn, normally planting the seed as soon as possible after the danger of frost has passed. Because it has such a short DTM, it usually produces a harvest by Memorial Day weekend. Both the plants and ears are small, but then most early corn varieties do produce small ears. I buy the seed right off the rack some years, but at the farm stores where I find it, it often sells out pretty early. I'm guessing that is because it is used by a lot of people fort their early corn since it can withstand late freezes and frosts to some degree.. One huge advantage of early corn is that it often matures ears even before the corn earworms and European corn borers arrive. I think I have seen Early Sunglow on the seed racks at either Lowe's, Home Depot or Wal-Mart this year, but not lately. If you have to order it, you normally can find it online at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

The reason corn is planted in blocks is that it is wind pollinated and the pollen spreads around best when corn is planted in blocks of at least four rows. When you grow corn in one long row, pollination often is poor and when you harvest the ears, they may or may not have lots of kernels. Instead of planting one long row along the edge of a garden, just plant 4 shorter rows all together in a block.

Be advised that if you have raccoons around, they love, love, love corn. In our earlier years here, I normally could get Early Sunglow to maturity before the raccoons even figured out I was growing corn. In more recent years, that has not been the case. One problem with the coons is that they will pick an ear, take a few bites of it and then discard it and eat part of another ear and apparently they do that all night long. It is not unusual for them to destroy dozens of ears in one night. Even worse, they won't wait for it to ripen, often pulling the ears 5-7 days before they'd be ready for a human being to harvest them, so you have a very slim chance of beating them to the corn.

Most people who live near me in an admittedly rural area with high levels of wildlife have either given up planting corn altogther, or surround it with an electric fence to keep the raccoons out. I grow mine in a corn cage....a fenced garden just for the corn that has a poultry netting 'roof' to keep the raccoons out.

This year in one of the new gardens I am going to plant corn without a corn cage or an electric fence. I am going to surround it with a double row of milk thistle plants in the hope that their big prickly leaves will keep the coons out of the corn.

There are few things better than fresh corn on the cob. I like to harvest it and take it right inside and cook it and eat it right then. Since I plant a lot, some of it always does end up in the freezer. And, now that I have gotten better at fighting the raccoons, less and less of it ends up in their tummies. One of our neighbor's relatives had a corn patch that was a quarter mile long (I don't know how wide) and raccoons still got every ear. Another neighbor's brother trapped and shot raccoons every single night...18 raccoons in 18 nights....in order to protect his corn and save his harvest and he still got zero ears. Corn is very popular with squirrels and other wildlife too, so be aware of that. Often you won't have an issue the first year, but in subsequent years, as they discover what you're growing, you'll have to fight them for every single bit of it.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Early Sunglow's Description at SESE

Thank you, Dawn! We would sure like to try it, just have to figure out the space issue. Today we re-measured the garden and it is 22 x 34 feet, so just a bit larger than I thought. I spread 21 bags of Back to Earth cotton hull compost on it today and it felt even bigger than that, lol! Larry got it all tilled in so it's now ready to go. So far I haven't seen coons out here but I am sure they are around. We've used deer netting fencing the last 2 years and didn't have any problems with wildlife getting into the garden (knock on wood). This year we also have chain link fence around the yard that we didn't have before but I still want to use the deer netting because it seems to also keep out the little critters. I wonder if raccoons would climb over it? Seems like their paws would get caught in it. We had to free a bird that got caught in it once, and several snakes came to their end by trying to get through it and got stuck. Larry doesn't like using it because it's hard to mow around it, but it has done the job. I mentioned a second time that we might want to consider making a second garden just for corn and this time he didn't make as much of a face as the first time :-). Maybe he's thinking about how good that corn would taste and warming up to the idea. Thank you again, I always appreciate your knowledge and advice!

Suzie

Suzie,

You're welcome.

Your garden has grown to such a nice size! I am sure it felt like it covered a full acre by the time you spread out all that BTE cottonhull compost.

Raccoons have proven to be almost unstoppable here. The ones near you may not realize you have corn for a few years. I have had more trouble with coons in the drought years since 2008 than I did in the earlier years. For a long time, I just planted pumpkins with my corn and the prickly foliage kept the coons out for years and years. Then the recurring droughts set in and the coons got hungrier. I don't know if deer netting will keep them out, or if they'll chew threw it or tear it apart. I can tell you that plastic bird netting (the type you use to keep birds out of fruit trees) doesn't stop coons, but it 'traps' snakes for us just like it did for you. One way some people succeed in keeping coons out of the corn is that they put up a regular fence (which the coons can climb) but the put pretty loose and floppy chicken wire around the top, leaving the top 2' of the chicken wire unattached to the poles. When the coons climb that high and reach the loose chicken wire it just kind of flops over and they can't make it up and over that part of the fence. I haven't tried the loose chicken wire here with the big garden because I know without mentioning it that Tim isn't going to want to go buy a minimum of 400' of chicken wire....so that's why we have the corn cage. It was not too hard to convince him to convert a smaller part of the garden to a corn-only area.

Larry wants corn. Larry needs corn. Y'all might as well just go ahead and plan on a new corn garden area. Sweet corn right from the garden is just so absolutely indescribably delicious!

You could make it a patriotic corn garden by adding the Dwarf Jade Blue and Ruby Queen corn varieties, you know. I'm always full of colorful ideas for veggies because I love having veggies that are unusual in color for that specific type of veggie. I like to grow red, white and blue potatoes too so we can have a patriotic potato salad for the Fourth of July.

Dawn

Well I didn't even think of coons chewing through the deer netting but I bet they would! They have to be the most persistent critters out there. Over the years I've heard a lot of stories about the damage they cause to gardens and homes. Years ago coons got into the attic of my former boss's home. I'll never forget him telling about sitting up in the attic with a gun, waiting for them to show their little faces so he could "take them out." I still have a visual of that, lol! I love your idea of planting red and blue corn too, and the colorful potato salad for Fourth of July!

Suzie

I've grown Early Sunglow in the DC area, NJ, PA, And FL for many years. As with other first earlies, it is not as high quality as others (but still beats anything you can buy) but it is first to the table and very good out of the garden.. Here in DC I usually get it by June 15-20. Main season corn isn't ready before late June or early July.
Most seed houses carry it and it is also on hardware store and garden center racks. If you only have space for one or two crops though, wait a bit and go with a full season (80+ days) variety.

Most corn tassels faster in short days. Don't try to grow Early Sunglow as a last fall crop planted the last days of July. My experience is it will tassel at two to three feet and produce midget ears. BUt the ears from an April or May planted crop will
be decent size (6-7") on 5' plants. March planted crops in Tallahasse though grew to 4' and produced decent corn in mid May.

I've grown Early Sunglow in the DC area, NJ, PA, And FL for many years. As with other first earlies, it is not as high quality as main season varieties (but still beats anything you can buy) but it is first to the table and very good out of the garden.. Here in DC I usually get it by June 15-20. Main season corn isn't ready before late June or early July.
Most seed houses carry it and it is also on hardware store and garden center racks. If you only have space for one or two crops though, wait a bit and go with a full season (80+ days) variety.

Most corn tassels faster in short days. Don't try to grow Early Sunglow as a last fall crop planted the last days of July. My experience is it will tassel at two to three feet and produce midget ears. BUt the ears from an April or May planted crop will
be decent size (6-7") on 5' plants. March planted crops in Tallahasse though grew to 4' and produced decent corn in mid May.

I picked up Early Sunglow Sweet Corn from Stillwater Ag, today.

Do I need to wait until the soil is warm enough as with main season corn?

So, it'll handle a brief overnight freeze? That's really awesome.

My family really loves corn, so I'm going to try an early crop to supplement the main corn crop.

heh crazy weather this year.

Bon, Early Sunglow is not persnickety about soil temperatures like super sweet varieties are. I usually plant it at/near/around the end of March for a harvest in May. It makes Fred crazy because it makes "small" ears compared to the main season corn, but I will happily eat small ears in May if it means we're eating homegrown corn. Later on, in June, we'll get large ears from the main crop. Anyhow, the size of the produce never has mattered to me--it is the flavor and quality that matters.

Early Sunglow has some cold tolerance, but I still cover it up if we are expecting temperatures to fall below freezing, since I don't want to lose however many weeks of growth it can have at that point in time. This wouldn't be necessary if those sporadic late freezes wouldn't hit 4 or 6 weeks or more after our average last frost date. There's no way I'm waiting until it truly is safe in May to sow corn seeds. No way, but I don't want it to freeze either.

Fred used to always plant corn and beans too early back when he was doing his own planting. I'm not sure if he was playing the odds or just too impatient to wait, but he often was replanting his frozen fields about the same time I was planting for the first time. I learned a lesson from that...kinda. It wasn't that I shouldn't necessarily plant early, but just that I should be prepared to cover up an early crop if the cold weather flared up. Now that he is older (94, I think, unless I've somehow lost track) and his son does more of the actual planting, I don't think they're planting quite as early. That's probably a good thing. I have next to no patience for replanting, so I do like to plant early, but only those things I'm willing to protect. I don't think I've ever lost a corn crop to freezing weather, but I've had some leaves nipped back...and that was before I started using row covers as needed. And, nowadays, since I have plenty of floating row cover to use, I generally am planting my corn seeds now about as early as Fred used to. (Ssshh. Don't tell him.)

Dawn

Tx Dawn. I saw the name of this variety and remember you writing that it's one of your preferred early crops. I nabbed it even though it was way more than I need (or wanted to spend). But little miss and her buttered corn on the cob ..... that good stuff. I'll let her think someone hybridized the cob size for all the little Misses in the world who love buttered corn on the cob.

I'm going to trust the process. You mention a ball park date around Memorial Day as general harvest time. First set will go in March 25th. I'll see how it does. Imagine that! I'm usually 2 weeks behind ya. So I'll follow up 2 weeks later with a second patch keeping an eye on what happens. If that fails, we can rely on the main crop if we beat the bugs and don't get any snow in May or something gardening apocalyptic specific to Okieland. I get what I get.

dankeschoen

suzie,

Where is the farm store in Edmond you mentioned? I am in Edmond a lot, but never noticed it before.