[Anguswylie]

Hi,
Has anybody tried growing sweetcorn from "popping corn"? Obviously its not likely to be single variety in there, but surely, as they produce quite large kernels and they taste ok. So, why not buy a bag of 2000 seeds for the price of 20?

What are your thoughts?

Gus.

[KalisDad]

Hi Angus,  looking through the past posts here it certainly seems possible, check this thread https://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=32095.0 and good luck if you try

[wolveryeti]

It will be popping corn, not sweetcorn - they are different cultivars.

[Subversive_plot]

I agree 100% with Wolveryeti. 

Popcorn is Zea mays everta.  Sweet corn is Zea mays convar. saccharata var. rugosa.  They are genetically separated by many generations of selective breeding.  It may be technically possible to eat very young popcorn in the milk stage (I don't really know), but don't expect it to taste like sweet corn.

The difference is comparable to the differences between the many varieties of Brassica rapa.  Bok Choy seed will never produce turnips, for example.

The link previously provided seems to be providing information on growing more popcorn from popcorn kernels.

[Learnerlady]

Hi
slightly off topic but I've tried to grow popcorn from "proper" popping seeds for the last 2 years.

First year the plants didn't do very well but had cold / wet periods but last year the plants were huge and cobs developed well. I dried the cobs and harvested the kernels but unfortunately they didn't pop and those that did were very small, slightly burnt and really not worth the effort so I won't be growing this year!!!

Both years I managed to grow eating sweetcorn ok

[Subversive_plot]

I grew up in Indiana (which is in the heart of "corn country" in the USA). 

Indiana has just a few counties that are well-suited to growing really good popcorn in terms of ideal soil conditions, but it is possible to grow OK popcorn if you carefully follow recommendations to let the popcorn field-dry to the proper kernel dryness.  Here are recommendations from the great State of Minnesota (another "corn country" state):  https://extension.umn.edu/vegetables/growing-popcorn#soil-testing-and-fertilizer-598510

Added later: Of course, there is also "field corn", which is usually harvested as dry corn after the stalks/husks are brown. Mainly it is used as corn for corn meal, animal feed, breakfast cereal, "grits", etc.
HOWEVER, from experience, if harvested at the same young stage as sweet corn, most varieties produce young corn that is also good "on the cob", if a bit less sweet. Field corn that is older can also be processed into "parched corn".  I don't know if you have a snack over there (called Corn Nuts over here), but that is something like parched corn, but not quite as good as the real thing.

[New shoot]

Popcorn seeds that you buy for popping are not sweetcorn, as others have said, but they will also have been grown somewhere overseas with a different climate from ours, longer summer and so on.

With sweetcorn, you are on the edge of what is possible in this country, so the varieties on sale are usually bred to perform in our variable summers and mature in time for you to get a crop.  It might seem a lot of money for seeds compared with a bag of popcorn, but do you want to waste a lot of growing space and time for something that may or may not end up giving you anything?  Homegrown corn is so wonderful to eat, most gardeners see an investment in some good seeds as a very worthwhile expense 

[Snow]

Yes i agree, it's well worth getting F1 sweetcorn, somewhere like premier seeds sells enough for £1 for 30 cobs or so and its vastly better than anything you can buy in the shops as they loose their sweetness so quick. I get a good harvest from early varieties like Swift even in a poor scottish summer, start indoors in modules in mid april to plant out in may under fleece for a few weeks.