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Ornamental or Indian corn comes in a huge range of sizes and colours, however most require too long a season to be mature in the UK. Fiesta and Strawberry have been selected as two that are relatively fast. Ornamental corns are not sweet, but are edible like maize.
Disclaimer
The descriptions, advice, suggestions and vegetation cycles below are aimed professional growers and are offered in all good faith, for purely informational purposes.
Fore more information please contact us on 01932 862059 or email info@tozerseeds.com
Please use the links below for detailed technical information about Sweetcorn. For further assistance please contact our Sweetcorn specialist, David Rogers
Ornamental or Indian Corn is grown in essentially the same way as normal sweetcorn, although it is advisable to increase the spacing between plants to stop them growing too tall. The one major problem is the dampness of the British climate at harvest time. If the corn is harvested damp it will not set and will become mouldy very quickly. Ornamental corn also requires a longer growing season than sweetcorn, typically 100 US days which translates as around 150 Southern English. To achieve the full growing season the corn must be sown early and harvested late,
Full maturity can be gauged by assessing black layer development. To check this simply shell off kernels from the cob and with your fingernail and scrape away the tip which was attached to the cob. This will expose the black layer if it has developed. The black layer will develop at around 30% moisture, when this occurs the kernel has reached physiological maturity and is no longer accepting nutrients through the cob. Corn harvested prior to black layer development will shrink, and if not dried properly, will mould.
It is possible to harvest the corn early (up to 45% moisture) and still have a usable product, however to do this the husk needs to be removed and the corn dried. The old farm way of doing this would be to pull back the husks, tie them and hang the corn, but the treatment will work equally well using mesh bags, so long as the cobs are exposed to dry air preferably heated. The corn needs to be dried to between 10 -15% moisture to prevent mould.
On a larger scale forced air-drying should be used. The husked corn should be placed in large slatted bins and exposed to forced dry air at around 40ºC for between 6 and 24 hours. Moisture content should be checked every few hours and treatment stopped at around 12% moisture. If the moisture content drops below 10% there is a much-increased risk of shattering.
