Comments on: Delicious Home Grown Corn – and a tasty movie about the industrial kind

By: leslie

leslie — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:02:08 +0000

Minnie -

forgive me for taking so long to reply! — guess the problem is I don’t know how to help… could you surround the corn patch with a low but unclimbable fence like a 2 foot wide sheet of metal flashing buried 6 inches at the bottom and bent outward a few inches at the top? That would (probably) stop (most of) the mice, if it were mice.

might be easier to cut a deal with one of those local farmers and just ask if you could buy some of their sweet corn that was “immature.”

Kathy, welcome

It IS hard to choose, isn’t it? We’re right in the throes of making those decisions ourselves. To answer your questions:

For us, Black Aztec/Mexican usually yields 2 ears per comparatively short (@ 6 foot ) plant. Sometimes you get a third, smaller one, but it’s not common.

As for the canning, we don’t do it so I can’t say for sure about this variety. Browning of canned corn is usually caused by sugars starting to caramelize, so it’s most likely to be a problem with corn that is very sweet, corn that is immature and corn that’s canned in quarts ( which have to be processed longer than pints). Black Aztec is sweet but not supersweet and only for a very short time so I doubt it would have browning problems although the sweet stage is the immature one, so you never know.

Browning aside, for what it’s worth I also doubt Black Aztec would be a satisfying choice if you’re only planting one variety and hope to can a substantial amount. The ears all pass through that yummy-on-the-cob stage but they don’t all do it at the same time.

By: Kathy Gladish

Kathy Gladish — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:29:27 +0000

Hi,
I’m trying to decide what corn to grow this season. How many ears of corn do you get from each plant of Black Aztec? Also does the sweet corn trun brown when you can it?

By: minnie

minnie — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:52:58 +0000

Up for the try, in went some corn seeds and, amazingly, up came the stalks, and in what seemed like no time at all, several actual ears. And just as they were forming kernals of any size at all, then came the mice…or whoever they were, and gone was my crop. A typical Australian experience for this relative newcomer. The next year I placed netting around the ears but they got through that easily.

Another hitch downunder is that Aussies eat or like their corn much older than I do, or at least accept it that way. Even farm stands and nearby veg shops which source locally sell it much too mature for my taste. They are quick to advertise it as ‘sweet’ and it is, rather,but not a patch on really young Maine corn!