[gunnag]

A friend of mine purchased 30 sweetcorn plug plants from a local garden centre and has offered them to me to grow on my allotment. These sweetcorn have no variety marking and the label simply says "Extra Early Extra Sweet".

My issue is that I'm already growing about 60 Lark F1 Sweetcorn and wondered if there would be a cross pollination problem?

Apparently Lark is a mid season sweetcorn so if the new sweetcorn are extra early presumably they germinate at different times?

Does anyone know whether I can plant these new plug plants on my allotment without causing a cross pollination problem? The maximum distance I could distance the new plants from the old is only about 20ft.

All info welcome.

[mumofstig]

Early Extra Sweet is a variety, that may be what you have
http://www.organiccatalogue.com/p2404/SWEETCORN-Early-Extra-Sweet-F1/product_info.html

The link suggests 8metres apart. I'd plant them as far apart as possible, but keep an eye on when the tassels at the top start opening. If you're lucky the pollen will be released at different times - so you'll miss crosspollination.

[gunnag]

Thanks for the info, I think youre right and I may well have been given Early Extra Sweet F1 as mentioned.y

I will try and plant the corn as far from the existing plants as possible. Hopefully the distance apart and differences in pollination times will avoid any issues.

Being in an allotment theres always going to be an issue with cross polination from neighbouring plots so I guess I will have to see what happens.