[Swing Swang]

In answer to a comment that Clover made that I thought warranted a post all by itself.

> I dislike sweet sweetcorn, but I can't find a reliable starchy one.  Do you know of one that does well here?

In a nutshell No! But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to keep trying. The varieties that I’ve been struggling with are all from South Africa:

(1) A traditional variety from seed saved on a farm for home consumption for generations – has a very long growing season, nominally 120 days, and just isn’t worth the bother, but Pops seems to be able to grow it successfully in southern Portugal.

(2) White Maize, MAC medium pearl, McDonalds Seeds (South Africa). Grew well in 2008, didn’t ripen in time, probably has too long a growing season for the UK.

(3) White Maize, Zama Star, Starke Ayres (South Africa). Said to be a 90 day variety on the packet. 50 plants grown. Excellent germination from pre-chitted seed. Started off indoors in April and planted out under cloches mid-May. Fed well during growing season with fertiliser high in nitrogen (chicken compost) and mulched with well rotted stray/horse compost. Harvested in November after the first frosts. Only one cob in four ripened to an acceptable level for human consumption.

Views: All of the varieties of white maize that I’ve tried have been very tall (pictures) between 2-3m. I don’t think that our growing season is long enough and I would give up if it were not for the fact that at least one farmer is growing this crop commercially in the UK (google Mwanaka). Maize grows at night so it really needs to get close to its maximum height before the days get too long. I also think that trying to get more than one cob from a plant is optimistic. Consequently I need to find a fast-growing 90 day, short, low yielding variety that doesn’t want really hot growing conditions because it’s going to have to be put outside fairly early.

Zama Star, 25 September 2009 (fence slats 185cm tall)


I’m going to try Zama Star again – I’ll start it off earlier indoors, then get out my BIG cloche and plant under those until they’re too tall (maybe one of those cheap polytunnels that are advertised on this site) I’ll also put them in the sunniest part of my plot. Just to prove that I can do it. In the meantime I’ll do a lot of searching to see if I can find a short/fast growing variety.

If you’d like to give Zama Star a go PM me and I’ll send you a couple of dozen seed (I’ve not got much left). If you have any comments then I’d love to hear them, and if anybody has really succeeded with this crop then please let me know what seed you use.

Regards,

SS