I bought some American white sweet corn at my local grocery store last year (in Canada) and they had a really good deal on it so I bought a bunch and blanched and froze it. Man, that was THE BEST frozen corn I've ever eaten! Hope I can find it again next year!! I have never seen white corn at any farmer's markets out here. I love it.
A very popular old variety white sweet corn is Silver Queen. 90 days to maturity, you need to harvest right when it milks, and you need to eat or process within 24 hours of picking. Otherwise the sugars turn to starch and you lose the fresh taste. Silver Queen comes from before sugar enhanced varieties, so you actually taste the corn, not just sugar.
@@classicrocklover5615 Thanks for that tip on a variety. The stuff I bought got shipped up here and I don't know how long it was off the stock obviously but it was still the sweetest corn ever! I can imagine I'd go totally crazy for it if I tasted it the same day as picking!
Most sweet corn in supermarkets will be supersweets...its the only way the corn will still have some flavor left in it after 3-7 days after harvest. Farmers' Markets or roadside stands is your best bet for the freshest corn if not harvesting your own.
@@classicrocklover5615 works fine for home gardeners that can harvest and process in a timely manner but just doesn't work for commercial operations...when I've grown those typses of varieties in the past I can taste them turning to starch even before noon on the morning it was picked and believe it or not, even when still on the stalk on very hot and humid days it even starts tasting bland and starchy...hardly any sugers in those type of varieties...but they are very tender.
@@wishwellfarms I need to move to the States. Trump's suggestion (joke, whatever it was) for Canada to become the 51st state didn't offend me at all! I love America and Americans and would love to live in an area where it's warmer and where there are lots of farmers (like you) that I could get all my goodies.
Appreciate the comprehensive reviews, super helpful 🙏🙌👍 kinda thinking of trying some hot peppers 🌶️ n making sauces for fun this year, going to get the paper catalogs, i love those things! God bless 🇺🇲🌱❤️
This was great! I can really sink my teeth into this sort of thing. I’ve found one of the most enjoyable things for me in the offseason is spending time pouring over seed catalogs, researching new varieties, and assessing the previous season’s wins and losses. I appreciate your insights. I might have to go back and reference some things here. As for sweet corn I agree with you on Anthem, as it’s done extremely well for me and I never have to worry about it. I’ve haven’t grown Xanadu yet but after researching I see it has higher ear placement than Nirvana. That’s one thing that bugs me about Nirvana is how close to the ground the ear is. Sounds like Xanadu is a back saver. I’ll be trying it out this year. Thanks for the valuable information.
No problem, glad it was helpful Nothing worse than low ear placement and my son and brother are both 6'4" and they joke about needing to walk on their knees to pick some of those early varieties with 20" high ears, lol
I got shredded on eggplant this year. I found out it's the stem where the flowers are. If I grabbed anywhere else, it was fine. But this year, I harvested nearly 150 pounds of it, and Peppers were out in full force.
Hi Jason. Although the varieties you mentioned are most likely named something else here in the UK, plus the catalogues are catering for your climate (oh to grow cantaloupes), I do recognise some of the varieties, mentioned in your vlogs. There's nothing like looking through a good seed catalogue any day. Merry Christmas to you and yours. Elaine 🎅🎄⛄️
Do you buy any open pollinated seeds? Just curious if you do any seed collection. Also, do you have a master grow schedule on a single spreadsheet or do you have separate sheets for each crop?
No. I've tried some in the past but we stick to all hybrids, and hybrids are not gmo...some folks don't know the difference. And hybrids are illegal to save the seed and they will also revert back to the parent when saved and planted and not be the same hybrid....that's the simple explanation. My seed planting schedule for most of the veggies is about 4-5 pages but the corn and beans each have their own. I will show all of this in an upcoming vid. Thanks!
It's just not feasible for a larger scale operation not to mention that it's illegal to keep hybrid seeds and they will not regrow as hybrids. It's fine for open pollinated/heirloom/heritage varieties however. Most farms need seeds that are cleaned, treated and ready to go in large quantities and waivers and agreements must be signed before seed companies can even ship certain varieties.
The end goal is the reason for farming decisions. From what I hear on Jason’s videos - which I find myself enjoying (thank you Jason, I know how much work producing a video is, all that editing!) - market farming requires consistency, which is sometimes hard to attain when growing using open pollinated seeds. Hybrid options provide plants that have resistance to pests and adverse growing conditions while growing huge vegetables.
@@robertmitchell6061 that is a tough one. They all taste very similar and the taste and texture raw in the field is often slightly differnent when steamed. If you like a really tender ear Nirvana might be the best eating, but for the reasons I mentioned in the video I won't be growing it any longer. I would say Xtra Tender 274A or Xanadu, but to be honest with you any of them are fantastic.
Hi - i may have missed the reason why in previous videos - why dont you grow any form of lettuce or leafy vegetables at Wishwell? Thanks for the video, great to learn about your process
I grew lettuce, spinach and kale for probably 5-6 years. I can't control the weeds around it so we had to put it on plastic mulch and we don't lay our mulch until early May and that is kind of late to plant those and they would only be good for a few weeks of harvest and then it would be too hot and they would start to bolt. I also don't have a good method to wash large quantities other than dunking them in a large water trough and when you do that the product needs spun to wring all the water off. then if we had a bad day at markets like from rain, the product all goes bad in a few days and would have to be thrown out and that is a lot of wasted product and labor to harvest it and clean it and pack it....just not worth the headaches for me. That's the short of it. Many other items far more profitable for me on my farm, but it was nice to have it for a few weeks when waiting on other produce to ripen, but that's a big investment in time and labor for just a few weeks.
@wishwellfarms appreciate the thoughtful response Jason. Had similar thought process when asked to grow speciality lettuce for a packhouses processor. Fortunately for us we didn't have to make those on farm investments like you mentioned. We struggle with weeds too as you can imagine. Also doesn't help that I refuse to spray! 😀 But yeah, lots more profitable options aside from lettuce for sure and you and your family do a great job raising these plants!
You mentioned pumpkins. I grew them last year for the first time. I grew 3/4 acre. I planted kratos, polar bear and Long Island cheese. Kratos was 1/2 acre so rest was kinda small. I started selling them 9/1 and was sold out completely before 9/30. Planning on planting 2 or 3 acres this year. What would be your to pumpkins to grow?
Check out Rupps pumpkins they are hard to beat and that has always been their specialy. They are all very powdery mildew resistant and they group them in many different sizes to choose from. I've grown probably 30 different ones over the years. Always liked their "gold series" gold medal, solid gold, 20 karat gold, gold medallion just to name a few.
another fun fact, hydroponic greenhouse indeterminate seeds are on another level than other tomato hybrids, almost $1 per seed this year....most were 80-90 cents each!
only certain seeds need lot's of heat to germinate well like peppers and watermelon and some herbs, the rest of them will pretty much pop right up with average heat and no supplemetal germination heat mats. It doesn't affect the health of the plant at, just shortens the germination time and germination rate, which is important when spending lots of $. My seed bill alone was almost $15,000 for 2025.
The only one I plant is Matriarch, about 3 times, and it is absolutely amazing! It's just as good eating if not better than all the main season improved super sweets. I have never sprayed roundup or Liberty on my corn, I just treat it like regular non herbicide resistant corn since they are all planted in the same fields side by side. I plant it for worm control only.
Never heard of them...if they aren't in the 4 commercial seed catalogs that I purchase from and the seed reps don't rave about them I dont mess with them. They must have top of the line disease packages, resistant to hollow heart and consitent fruit set and size and color and yield for me to consider something new. Glad you found some good ones that works for you.
@@wishwellfarms both are at Seedway I know! Crackerjack was rated their best tasting and tropical sunshine I want to say is one of the top grocery store yellow seedless
We narrowed it down to 5 seed companies this year would be nice to just use 1. I did get all the corn and melons from Rupp. None of the eastern seed companies sell chili pepper seeds thats alot of our business. Went with kickoff,signature xr and xanadu. still have 10000 mirai seeds and thats the end of an era 25 years.
Good night, 5 companies! The same goes for supplies for greenhouse and farm, I've been able to get it narrowed down to about 5-6 companies instead of 9 or 10 like it was for me 20 years ago. I guess if you count my hydro seeds and one tomato variety I get from Seedway, I use 4 seed companies. With the superior seed genetics over the past 5-10 years I'm confident you won't miss mirai AT ALL, but getting your customers to understand that might be the hardest part.
I grew it about 15 years ago, its a big ear but that is an SE, they don’t know what they're missing out on by not growing augmented/improved supersweets.
Not sure how many seeds you actually needed of for example the watermelon. But if they offer larger packs couldnt you just keep the seed for atleast another season? Considering the shelf life is like 4-5 years? Id assume the germination % should still be decent for a second year.
The main reason why is because I often have about 1000 sds left over of certain varieties already and only need 1,000 or 2,000 more sds of them and hate to buy 5,000...too risky at $350-$500 per thousand seeds. My seed bill is already at $13,000 for next year and don't want it to be any higher, lol
I grew that about 16 years ago, but like I said in the video we plant all augmented/improved supersweets now. Silver King is an SE. The holding ability in the field and in the cooler is out of this world on supersweets and the sweetness is on another level. I don't even grow triple sweets/synergistics any longer because they aren't much different than SE's, 25% supersweet and 75% SE.
Do you think the watermelon seeds would hold over for a few years and still get good germination if you bought at a 5000 quantity? Or would that be too risky to try to save a little bit of money?
Normally they do but sometimes certain seeds do not so if I can avoid buying that much I will. Now I have had success holding cantaloupe , cucumbers and zucchini seeds for several years.
I am not familiar with growing seedless watermelons. I’ve grown seeded watermelons for a few years. I just wanna know how you do it. I know there’s some weird germination things that has to happen.
there is a lot of biology and genetics behind it and too hard to explain but if you google it you can read all about it. After planting seedless watermelons you have to plant a companion seeded watermelon next to them in order to pollinate them in a 4:1 ratio, four seedless to every one seeded. I have a video demonstrating how we do it here: ruclips.net/video/2wmZo2o_Ru0/видео.htmlsi=R88IQAZqYmrkKgna
@@calebboulds most seeded varieties will work but there are special seeded ones desiged just for planting with seedless that have extended flowering periods that go well beyond the seedless flowering period so they all get pollinated, and they are small useless melons so they are easily distinguished and not mistakenly picked. I use Wild Card Plus and Ace Plus but I believe Ace had a crop failure this year.
I bought some American white sweet corn at my local grocery store last year (in Canada) and they had a really good deal on it so I bought a bunch and blanched and froze it. Man, that was THE BEST frozen corn I've ever eaten! Hope I can find it again next year!! I have never seen white corn at any farmer's markets out here. I love it.
A very popular old variety white sweet corn is Silver Queen. 90 days to maturity, you need to harvest right when it milks, and you need to eat or process within 24 hours of picking. Otherwise the sugars turn to starch and you lose the fresh taste. Silver Queen comes from before sugar enhanced varieties, so you actually taste the corn, not just sugar.
@@classicrocklover5615 Thanks for that tip on a variety. The stuff I bought got shipped up here and I don't know how long it was off the stock obviously but it was still the sweetest corn ever! I can imagine I'd go totally crazy for it if I tasted it the same day as picking!
Most sweet corn in supermarkets will be supersweets...its the only way the corn will still have some flavor left in it after 3-7 days after harvest. Farmers' Markets or roadside stands is your best bet for the freshest corn if not harvesting your own.
@@classicrocklover5615 works fine for home gardeners that can harvest and process in a timely manner but just doesn't work for commercial operations...when I've grown those typses of varieties in the past I can taste them turning to starch even before noon on the morning it was picked and believe it or not, even when still on the stalk on very hot and humid days it even starts tasting bland and starchy...hardly any sugers in those type of varieties...but they are very tender.
@@wishwellfarms I need to move to the States. Trump's suggestion (joke, whatever it was) for Canada to become the 51st state didn't offend me at all! I love America and Americans and would love to live in an area where it's warmer and where there are lots of farmers (like you) that I could get all my goodies.
Appreciate the comprehensive reviews, super helpful 🙏🙌👍 kinda thinking of trying some hot peppers 🌶️ n making sauces for fun this year, going to get the paper catalogs, i love those things! God bless 🇺🇲🌱❤️
Yeah, catalogs are so fun to leaf through in the off season...hope you have a successful hot pepper growing season!
Thanx Jason! Iwill have to take a look at Rupp and Gowan.
They are my favorite, but also check out Stokes and Seedway.
@@wishwellfarms Will do I am looking for 2025!
Thank you for the share, years of experience is worth a lot ✌️
You are very welcome, thanks for watching!
Thanks for the info 👊
Sure thing Steve, thanksf for watching!
This was great! I can really sink my teeth into this sort of thing. I’ve found one of the most enjoyable things for me in the offseason is spending time pouring over seed catalogs, researching new varieties, and assessing the previous season’s wins and losses. I appreciate your insights. I might have to go back and reference some things here. As for sweet corn I agree with you on Anthem, as it’s done extremely well for me and I never have to worry about it. I’ve haven’t grown Xanadu yet but after researching I see it has higher ear placement than Nirvana. That’s one thing that bugs me about Nirvana is how close to the ground the ear is. Sounds like Xanadu is a back saver. I’ll be trying it out this year. Thanks for the valuable information.
No problem, glad it was helpful Nothing worse than low ear placement and my son and brother are both 6'4" and they joke about needing to walk on their knees to pick some of those early varieties with 20" high ears, lol
Wonderful video. Very informative.
Thank you for watching and commenting!
Merry upcoming Christmas,Jason ! Yep,I was one of those busybodies asking about cabbage...
Merry Christmas! Haha, yep I remember that you were one of them! We'll see how it goes this year.
I grew Soltice corn last year-bulk up on it, its the best I’ve ever had. Good luck this upcoming yesr. 👍
Like I always say , this stuff is fascinating . I had know idea how this seed stuff works , it’s expensive . Thanks for your informative videos .
you are very welcome, and thanks for watching!
This is amazing!! It all takes so much patience & studying - great job! God bless you and your family. Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year 👍🎄🙏
Thank you, Merry Christmas!
@wishwellfarms 👍♥️🎄🙏
I got shredded on eggplant this year. I found out it's the stem where the flowers are. If I grabbed anywhere else, it was fine. But this year, I harvested nearly 150 pounds of it, and Peppers were out in full force.
Yeah I meant to say stems, they can really hurt ya, lol. It was a good year for peppers and eggplant, that's for sure!
Great video!! New subscriber here! 😊 For our home garden we use the g90 sweet corn.. very impressive..
Thanks for the sub!
Hi Jason. Although the varieties you mentioned are most likely named something else here in the UK, plus the catalogues are catering for your climate (oh to grow cantaloupes), I do recognise some of the varieties, mentioned in your vlogs. There's nothing like looking through a good seed catalogue any day. Merry Christmas to you and yours. Elaine 🎅🎄⛄️
Possibly but I don't know for sure
Do you buy any open pollinated seeds? Just curious if you do any seed collection. Also, do you have a master grow schedule on a single spreadsheet or do you have separate sheets for each crop?
No. I've tried some in the past but we stick to all hybrids, and hybrids are not gmo...some folks don't know the difference. And hybrids are illegal to save the seed and they will also revert back to the parent when saved and planted and not be the same hybrid....that's the simple explanation. My seed planting schedule for most of the veggies is about 4-5 pages but the corn and beans each have their own. I will show all of this in an upcoming vid. Thanks!
You're good for the serious gardeners and small farms, but will you please do a brief video on why not keep seeds from your own produce.
It's just not feasible for a larger scale operation not to mention that it's illegal to keep hybrid seeds and they will not regrow as hybrids. It's fine for open pollinated/heirloom/heritage varieties however. Most farms need seeds that are cleaned, treated and ready to go in large quantities and waivers and agreements must be signed before seed companies can even ship certain varieties.
The end goal is the reason for farming decisions. From what I hear on Jason’s videos - which I find myself enjoying (thank you Jason, I know how much work producing a video is, all that editing!) - market farming requires consistency, which is sometimes hard to attain when growing using open pollinated seeds. Hybrid options provide plants that have resistance to pests and adverse growing conditions while growing huge vegetables.
I’m in Zebulon nc zone 8a what would be your suggestion for the best sweet corn to grow I want the best?
any of the varities I mentioned would grow just fine there...these are grown from Florida to Canada.
@ what would be your personal favorite to eat if you had to choose one if you don’t mind me asking?
@@robertmitchell6061 that is a tough one. They all taste very similar and the taste and texture raw in the field is often slightly differnent when steamed. If you like a really tender ear Nirvana might be the best eating, but for the reasons I mentioned in the video I won't be growing it any longer. I would say Xtra Tender 274A or Xanadu, but to be honest with you any of them are fantastic.
@ thank you
Great info and timely. Was just about to start order for 2025. Thanks
sure thing...planting time will be here before you know it!
Hi - i may have missed the reason why in previous videos - why dont you grow any form of lettuce or leafy vegetables at Wishwell? Thanks for the video, great to learn about your process
I grew lettuce, spinach and kale for probably 5-6 years. I can't control the weeds around it so we had to put it on plastic mulch and we don't lay our mulch until early May and that is kind of late to plant those and they would only be good for a few weeks of harvest and then it would be too hot and they would start to bolt. I also don't have a good method to wash large quantities other than dunking them in a large water trough and when you do that the product needs spun to wring all the water off. then if we had a bad day at markets like from rain, the product all goes bad in a few days and would have to be thrown out and that is a lot of wasted product and labor to harvest it and clean it and pack it....just not worth the headaches for me. That's the short of it. Many other items far more profitable for me on my farm, but it was nice to have it for a few weeks when waiting on other produce to ripen, but that's a big investment in time and labor for just a few weeks.
@wishwellfarms appreciate the thoughtful response Jason. Had similar thought process when asked to grow speciality lettuce for a packhouses processor. Fortunately for us we didn't have to make those on farm investments like you mentioned. We struggle with weeds too as you can imagine. Also doesn't help that I refuse to spray! 😀 But yeah, lots more profitable options aside from lettuce for sure and you and your family do a great job raising these plants!
You mentioned pumpkins. I grew them last year for the first time. I grew 3/4 acre. I planted kratos, polar bear and Long Island cheese. Kratos was 1/2 acre so rest was kinda small. I started selling them 9/1 and was sold out completely before 9/30. Planning on planting 2 or 3 acres this year. What would be your to pumpkins to grow?
Ps thanks for the info I always look forward to your videos. The information has helped me tremendously in my first year growing veggies.
@@chrispeebles3846 Thank you!
Check out Rupps pumpkins they are hard to beat and that has always been their specialy. They are all very powdery mildew resistant and they group them in many different sizes to choose from. I've grown probably 30 different ones over the years. Always liked their "gold series" gold medal, solid gold, 20 karat gold, gold medallion just to name a few.
Fun fact, some hybrid tomato seeds cost 10x than gold per pound.
That's almost as much as printer ink 😂
another fun fact, hydroponic greenhouse indeterminate seeds are on another level than other tomato hybrids, almost $1 per seed this year....most were 80-90 cents each!
Does it matter if you put the seeds trays on a heat pad for them to sprout? Does it make them more healthy?
only certain seeds need lot's of heat to germinate well like peppers and watermelon and some herbs, the rest of them will pretty much pop right up with average heat and no supplemetal germination heat mats. It doesn't affect the health of the plant at, just shortens the germination time and germination rate, which is important when spending lots of $. My seed bill alone was almost $15,000 for 2025.
How do you like the Roundup ready sweet corn.
The only one I plant is Matriarch, about 3 times, and it is absolutely amazing! It's just as good eating if not better than all the main season improved super sweets. I have never sprayed roundup or Liberty on my corn, I just treat it like regular non herbicide resistant corn since they are all planted in the same fields side by side. I plant it for worm control only.
Tropical Sunshine(Yellow)and Crackerjack seedless watermelons did well for me this year! They were very very sweet! Ever tried them?
Never heard of them...if they aren't in the 4 commercial seed catalogs that I purchase from and the seed reps don't rave about them I dont mess with them. They must have top of the line disease packages, resistant to hollow heart and consitent fruit set and size and color and yield for me to consider something new. Glad you found some good ones that works for you.
@@wishwellfarms both are at Seedway I know! Crackerjack was rated their best tasting and tropical sunshine I want to say is one of the top grocery store yellow seedless
We narrowed it down to 5 seed companies this year would be nice to just use 1. I did get all the corn and melons from Rupp. None of the eastern seed companies sell chili pepper seeds thats alot of our business. Went with kickoff,signature xr and xanadu. still have 10000 mirai seeds and thats the end of an era 25 years.
Good night, 5 companies! The same goes for supplies for greenhouse and farm, I've been able to get it narrowed down to about 5-6 companies instead of 9 or 10 like it was for me 20 years ago. I guess if you count my hydro seeds and one tomato variety I get from Seedway, I use 4 seed companies. With the superior seed genetics over the past 5-10 years I'm confident you won't miss mirai AT ALL, but getting your customers to understand that might be the hardest part.
Speaking of Sweet Corm ,the Veggie Boys swear by a Sweet Corn called "Montauk" Have you ever tried this variety..?
I grew it about 15 years ago, its a big ear but that is an SE, they don’t know what they're missing out on by not growing augmented/improved supersweets.
Love the Veggie Boys....And GIRLS!
@@classicrocklover5615 they do a good job, hope to visit them one of these days and make a video there.
@@wishwellfarms I still can't believe people want Kohlrabi..
Roll your beet seed on hard surface with rolling pin before planting will break up cluster so you won’t have to thin
Not sure how many seeds you actually needed of for example the watermelon. But if they offer larger packs couldnt you just keep the seed for atleast another season? Considering the shelf life is like 4-5 years? Id assume the germination % should still be decent for a second year.
The main reason why is because I often have about 1000 sds left over of certain varieties already and only need 1,000 or 2,000 more sds of them and hate to buy 5,000...too risky at $350-$500 per thousand seeds. My seed bill is already at $13,000 for next year and don't want it to be any higher, lol
My best-selling white corn is Silver King. Much better than Silver Queen.
I grew that about 16 years ago, but like I said in the video we plant all augmented/improved supersweets now. Silver King is an SE. The holding ability in the field and in the cooler is out of this world on supersweets and the sweetness is on another level. I don't even grow triple sweets/synergistics any longer because they aren't much different than SE's, 25% supersweet and 75% SE.
Do you think the watermelon seeds would hold over for a few years and still get good germination if you bought at a 5000 quantity? Or would that be too risky to try to save a little bit of money?
Normally they do but sometimes certain seeds do not so if I can avoid buying that much I will. Now I have had success holding cantaloupe , cucumbers and zucchini seeds for several years.
I am not familiar with growing seedless watermelons. I’ve grown seeded watermelons for a few years. I just wanna know how you do it. I know there’s some weird germination things that has to happen.
there is a lot of biology and genetics behind it and too hard to explain but if you google it you can read all about it. After planting seedless watermelons you have to plant a companion seeded watermelon next to them in order to pollinate them in a 4:1 ratio, four seedless to every one seeded. I have a video demonstrating how we do it here: ruclips.net/video/2wmZo2o_Ru0/видео.htmlsi=R88IQAZqYmrkKgna
@@wishwellfarms what variety do you use for the male watermelon
@@calebboulds most seeded varieties will work but there are special seeded ones desiged just for planting with seedless that have extended flowering periods that go well beyond the seedless flowering period so they all get pollinated, and they are small useless melons so they are easily distinguished and not mistakenly picked. I use Wild Card Plus and Ace Plus but I believe Ace had a crop failure this year.
@ thank you merry Christmas