Absolutely. I always grow my sweetcorn outdoors.

Its not a widespread commercial crop though, it needs all the growing season there is so delays for bad weather in spring can threaten a crop and early autumn rains can make it hard to harvest. I don't think its viable at all where I live except with a little greenhouse help :)

Well there are certainly fields of it in my area (Somerset) where you can go and pick your own. I have seen it in many Southern counties, although it is also used to make silage, so those crops may not have been for cobs. Grows fine in my garden.

Not in northern England, though!

Resin

That's as I thought. Probably varieties bred for the northern US and Canada do well.

Eating corn-on-the-cob is a relatively recent phenomenon, though? Like pumpkin farms and trick-or-treating?

I know that in France people generally give you strange looks if you mention sweetcorn as a food for humans (they feed it to their livestock) but as far as I can remember, we've been eating the stuff here in the UK for a good number of (y)ears.

Didn't corn-on-the-cob come into fashion in the seventies, around the same time as green peppers and avocadoes? All three were completely unknown in the obscure corner of Wales where I was brought up in the fifties and sixties. Unless you count the occasional tin of Jolly Green Giant, imported from the US. Not that my mother ever fed us anything exotic like that.

"Probably varieties bred for the northern US and Canada do well"

Not necessarily. Those are cultivars selected to grow where summers are short, but hot. For Britain, you need cultivars that grow well with long, but cool* summers. Not the same!

* Actually, by US standards, downright cold!

Resin

Corn on the cob, even sweetcorn, was rare when I was a child. I don't know if the increase in consumption since then is down to more being grown or more being imported.

Yeah, what's the deal with british summer? On tv I see people going about with thick long-sleeve sweaters on and sitting around in greeenhouses (if you tried that in NA you'd be in the hospital with heatstroke). That's why I was wondering if corn can ripen. On the veggie forum people have said that it's tough to ripen winter squash over there.

We have an oceanic climate here, where the temperatures are controlled mainly by the sea surrounding us - which means it changes very little between winter and summer. Sea temperatures around Britain are typically 6° (southeast coast) to 9° (west coast) in winter, and 13° (northeast coast) to 17° (southeast coast) in summer.

Land temperatures vary a bit more than that, but nowhere in Britain except a few mountaintops in Scotland has a January mean temperature below freezing, and even the warmest area (southeast) only has a July mean of around 18° (up where I am in northeastern England, the July mean is below 15°).

Where you are, the climate is dominated by a large continental landmass, which cools down a lot more in winter, and heats up a lot more in summer. So you're roughly 10° colder in winter, and 10° hotter in summer, than we are.

Of course some parts of North America do have a similar climate to Britain; the best example is southeasternmost Alaska and the west coast of Canada (Queen Charlotte Islands, etc). There's not too many people living there, though.

Resin

I live in the north of England and my corn is doin really well. It is about 6 foot high, flowering and the cobs are forming so hopefully it will crop ok.

I'm growing corn this year for the first time, and don't ask me how, but even with the terrible summer we are having this year it's tall, flowering and has quite a few cobs forming on it. Maybe somebody knows: when is it usually ready for harvesting? Jonathan.

Look out, both of you, because that is right when everybody wants a piece of your corn. The corn ear-worm lays its eggs in the tassell, and soon the worms march up and down the rows of budding kernals. If the ears survive that and start to sweeten up, then every critter (whatever skunk and racoon analogs are there) will want a taste.

Prepare to be jealous pnb ... no corn ear worms in the UK! Nor squash vine borer. Nor Colorado beetles. Nor Japanese beetles. Not sure that there are any animals that go for growing corn either, unless it might be grey squirrels (introduced from the US!)But I have seen rooks going for ripe corn. Birds and rodents can have a go at the seed if sown outdoors but many people sow in pots and transplant to get a good start on the weather. Number one pest in my garden are slugs and snails. We also have big fat wood pigeons which can detstroy any brassica crops left unnetted. I'm impressed you know we don't have skunks and racoons. Have you seen the old Disney version of 101 Dalmations where they have put skunks in the countryside around London? And it always bugs (no pun intended) me when films set in Britain add background sound to night scenes which includes a constant chorus of cicadas or crickets, because presumably someone thinks that's what night should sound like. Not here it doesn't.

Oh I love that sound - grew up with it constantly in my ears. It's the predominant sound of nature in the south.

But I bet badgers would have a go at ripe corn in your rural areas. And it must be nice not having to worry about your dogs getting skunked.

Err, our Badgers are carnivores. They don't eat veg. The Sweet corn I grow is the most pest-resistant plant I know. Even the slugs and snails leave it alone!!

You're a lucky bunch then. Why is it that our maize has no pests over there, while your cabbage gets mauled over here by your cabbage moth? Doesn't seem fair to me.....

Raccons are carnivores also, but they love ripe corn.

Our Badgers do eat a lot of plant food, only a fairly small % of their diet is meat.

Guess the reason why nothing much eats maize here, is because the crop is so marginal - none of its established pests and diseases can take our climate either. Also it hasn't been grown much, or for long, so any maizivores that do turn up can't find it easily.

Resin

Yep, whereas cabbage has been over here for four centuries, and in it's various forms is grown widely, and the imported cabbage-moth present since the 1800's.

pnbrown seems to know more about badgers than we do! I had a quick google and found this.

Strange to say I've never had cabbage moth. As I said my major brassica pest is wood pigeons, then snails and occasionally cabbage white butterflies.

Here is a link that might be useful: badgers and maize

I figured a badger is pretty similar to a raccoon - seems I was right, is all.

Cabbage white butterfly is what we call the imported cabbage moth, I think. It wreaks tremendous havoc over here.

OK. Another quick Google on images and it seems that what you call a cabbage moth we call a cabbage butterfly. We have another creature we call a cabbage moth. Interesting.

Hi, pn. Yep, you're right about badgers being omnivores. Any ideas about how to stop a rabbit nibbling my plants?(Guns, dogs and netting aren't a solution for a variety of reasons)

Cajary, fortunately I've never had any rabbit problems (that I know of, though may have blamed deer for rabbit damage).

Flora, the last two years the cabbage-moth infestation has been coming later in the season and less severely. I have no idea what the reasons are, but it could be that cutting back on brassicas in my garden is helping. Pretty much my only brassica is red russian kale, and I allow a lot less to grow than I used to (I say 'allow' because it has naturalized in the garden). And this year is the best since I started with brassicas - the kale has scarcely any caterpillars at all so far. Knock on wood. And I've been more pre-emptive with the bt spray.

I'm reading a history of operation "market garden" in holland. In it, there is a mention in the war diary of an american GI of roasting fresh corn for dinner. Which can only mean that dutch farmers were growing maize in 1944.