Your county ag extension agent can give you a recommended list for your area. Here the Silver Series (Silver Princess, Silver King, Silver Queen) are the best performers. Augusta also does pretty well. I don't grow the supersweets (SH2) so if that is your preference, hopefully someone will chime in. The synergistic Avalon was passing fair, but not up to the standard of Silver King.

i live in zone 4 so my experience is probably not applicable to zone nine however i did an experiment this year because our growing season is so short (100+ days) it is hard to get a good crop of corn.

i started my corn in the green house and set it out the last week of May and i had corn on the 24th of July.

because it was an experiment i only did one planting so the corn was done by the 2nd week of Aug.

next year i am going to do at least 3 staggered planting.

i grew Ambrose this year and it was ever so good. that is a sweet enhanced variety. not the supper sweet stuff. it is also a bi-color corn.

Dean

I prefer Argent White of silver queen 10 times over.

I did two varieties this year - a supersweet that matured in 70 days or so, and Silverqueen which is closer to 90 days.

Worked out perfectly, we had corn almost every night for dinner for a solid 4 weeks - was great!

(FYI I planted them two to a square foot, in a 4X8 bed, about 40% of the bed with the early variety, and 60% with silverqueen).

Wiringman, when did you start your corn? Is your green house heated by electric or just sun? In what did you start your corn?

With all due respect to above poster, I'm going to have to disagree with the planting density advice. Most pople plant sweet corn too thick. Two plants per sq ft is way too thick. Now it may work in a very small bed where the outside plants get extra light. But in a large planting you want at least 2 sqft per plant. I allow 3 sqft per plant but I'm not in good corn country. It does give me about 1.5 large ears per plant on ave. Field corn is planted thicker than sweetcorn. But even field corn is allowed more than one sqft per plant, usually around 1.5 sqft per plant.

Any of the good sweet corns will work on the coast of CA. I had very good luck with Miari 301 from Harris seed this yr. They have dozens of good varieties most of which will work. But in a long season area like CA I'd choose a late maturing variety, 75 days or longer.

The Fruitnut

As Farmer D said above, the Silver Series does well here on the East coast. I grew Silver Queen and Silver King this year and both did very well. I plan on growing both again next year. I also suggest talking to your local Coop Rep or Master Gardener group. They should have recommendations for what will grow well in your area.

Rick

You are the best!!! Thanks so very much for all the information. I so appreciate all the great advice. I'm looking for the Master Gardener program and/or the Ag agent. (Frankly, didn't know there was such a thing in San Diego) Also, thanks for the info on the corn. I wrote Park Seeds and they said if I planted early enough, the corn I had asked about would produce. Yippee. Can hardly wait til next year. Thanks again, Cbad

Agreed Fruit nut, if you wanted to plant large amounts, for more than a family or so, more space "could" be desirable.

For me, a 4X8 space, planted two to a square foot yielded about 40 ears, a little over 1 ear per stalk - it was perfect, and grew incredibly.

For a small family like me, who has visitors on the weekends, 40 ears over 4 weeks (10 ears a week) was absolutely perfect. It confined the corn to 1 raised bed, and provided all the ears I wanted. If I planted it 1 to two square feet as you had suggested, I would have gotten at most 20 ears, and that just would not cut it!

Anyway, just wanted to respond - totally depends on the application. In a small home garden for a small family, I find "block" planted close together work better than rows farther apart.

Sorry, I mistyped above quantities. It was 60 stalks (4 of the 64 planted didn't germinate) and I got about 80 years out of it - a little better than 1 ear per stalk. Over 4 weeks, that was 20 ears a week. Perfect for our family of 3. Enough to use 5-6 ears a night on the weekends for visitors, and a couple ears a night during the week for us.

Just wanted to correct the numbers i gave :)

Hey jw, whatever works for you is fine. But two plants per sq ft is 86,000 plants per acre. No commercial grower I've seen in 50 yrs has ever planted field or sweet corn at more than 40,000 plants per acre. That is a very thick planting and results in a few to many barren plants. Sweetcorn is usually planted at 18,000 to 24,000 plants per acre. Even that can be too thick. I prefer 15,000 plants per acre and there are 43560 sq ft per acre. Planted thin you get bigger ears and more ears per plant. The plants also stand up much better. Thick corn can lodge badly around here.

But if 86,000 plants per acre works for you, well that's great. You are in better corn country than TX or CA. I grew up in Illinois and have grown corn all my life. So I know what good corn is like.

The Fruitnut

I generally agree with fruitnut on the planting population with one exception. For many years I have been planting Silver Queen in 30" rows with 4-6 seeds per foot. That works out to approximately 85,000 seeds per acre. I have always averaged about 1 1/2 large ears per stalk. This year my wife wanted me to plant a yellow corn, so I planted Illini Extra Sweet at the same thick population. It averaged about 1 1/4 ears per stalk, but most were small to medium sized. I will still plant the Silver Queen thick, but I am going to back off on the population when planting other varieties.

I'm talking about plants per acre not seeds per acre. If you can get 1.5 large ears per plant at 85,000 plants per acre you should call Guniness Book of Records because that would be a worlds record by a factor of at least two. I've conducted many plant population studies on field corn and yields reach maximum at ~32,000 to 36,000 plants per acre. That's in a very productive area with full irrigation. Yields are maximized at about 35,000 ears per acre. If you try to get many more ears than that by increasing population the plants start going barren; that's plants with no ear.

Sweetcorn is planted thinner than field corn because ear size is more important than maximum yield. Also the plants are less productive because they are shorter season than field corn. Our standard sweetcorn in the irrigated region of Texas around Amarillo for many years was Silver Queen. It is actually a late sweetcorn and very productive. But even with full irrigation we planted no more than 28,000 seeds per acre. That would give about 24,000 plants per acre which is an 8-10 inch spacing in 30 inch rows.

I don't care what any experienced growers are getting away with or think they are. But new growers should be given reasonable recommendations. 85,000 plants per acre for sweetcorn is way out of line.

The Fruitnut