Apr 7, 2007
Sweet’s Gourmet Corn aims to be true to its name

Not every farmer can say his name’s his claim to fame, but Gary Sweet can.

Sweet’s Gourmet Sweet Corn is for sale at more than 40 locations in the city and suburbs around Cleveland, Ohio. He sells supersweet SH2 varieties that have great shelf life, and he guarantees the sweetness and flavor.

That guarantee, plus a generosity that shows up in his 13- or 14-ear “dozens,” allows him to ask $6.75 a dozen – and get it. His farm store in North Ridgeville has made exit 152 off the Ohio turnpike famous, he said.

Every summer day starting July 1 (early, thanks to use of some row covers), he sells two or three acres of sweet corn, his only product, 150 acres in a season.

The last few years, he’s been a frequent speaker at winter horticulture meetings across the country, talking about his marketing and production methods. He’s a strong advocate of strip-till planting and cover crops. The last year or so, his hot topic has been topping sweet corn – chopping the tops off sweet corn stalks anywhere from a day to two weeks before harvest.

Topping before harvest

His advocacy of sweet corn topping spurred researchers in New York to try to verify the benefits he claimed – and they did. Sweet lists about four advantages.

Picking ease. After the corn stalks have been cut off at just about ear height, much of that itchy, scratchy part of the plant is gone, he said. Workers can see what they’re doing as they pick and throw the ears into wagons. It’s cooler for workers with the breeze at face level.

The researchers, Chuck Bornt and Ted Blomgren with the Capital District Vegetable Program in New York, said workers agreed about this.

“Pickers told us they much preferred harvesting in topped plots,” they said.

Earlier ripening. The researchers also agreed with Sweet that topped corn ripened two to three days earlier, without reducing yields.

Sweet thinks better sunlight penetration deeper to more productive lower leaves advances ripening, and said he uses topping to adjust production.

“If I’m long on corn, I don’t top until just before picking. I don’t need it ripe earlier, but I do want the better conditions for pickers. If I want corn ripe faster, I top it right after pollination two to three weeks before harvest.”

Fewer pests. Gary theorizes that insects and other pests are more likely to work in corn with tassels in place and that removing them cuts down their numbers. This, he said, makes less of an attraction for birds.

The researchers agreed that bird damage was reduced, perhaps because birds had fewer places to land and perch and fewer places to hide.

Less storm damage. Lodging after storms is reduced with the shorter plants, Sweet said.

“If we’re expecting high winds, we top the corn if we can,” he said.

The topper is a series of mower blades run by hydraulic motors and set on a toolbar mounted in front of a high-clearance tractor. It does six rows at once.

Getting a good price

For a number of years, Gary and Terry Sweet produced lots of sweet corn – 2,500 acres of it – and sold it wholesale. Now, he said, they make more money on 150 acres. He began the switch back in 1989, developing stand-alone locations where a person managed an Amish-built cart filled with sweet corn. The carts are blue and white, 4- by 8-feet in size.

He relied on sweetness, freshness and flavor -– guaranteed – to attract customers, but he also located his 40-some carts next to supermarkets. He didn’t try to steal all their customers, but he did take those willing to pay a higher price for a guaranteed good product.

Since then, he’s come to new terms with supermarkets.

“I’m selling more through chain stores now than through my other outlets,” he said.

But he does it in a different kind of way.

Sweet sells corn in packages, not loose. As his employees pack, they remove excess husk and bad ears. They make judgments about the quality of the dozen, half-dozen or quarter-dozen ears in a package. When corn ears are short, they put in extra ears. All “dozens” contain at least 13, and many have 14 or 15 ears.

“It depends more on how full the bag is than how many ears are in it,” Sweet said.

Sweet hires about 70 people who pick his corn, all by hand, and then pack it, all by hand, in a separate operation but out in the field. He doesn’t have a packing shed.

The supermarkets like his corn, Sweet said. Some sell both his corn and other kinds. The corn sales area stays cleaner with pre-packed corn, without husks and silks on the floor. Nobody husks an ear of his corn and throws it back on the pile if they don’t like it. There is no sorting.

“Those other bins look like the pigs have been in them,” he said.

Still, a lot of his corn moves through convenience stores at Shell gas stations. He likes that marketing system, too.

“We never use an honor system for selling corn,” Sweet said. “We always have an attendant. We offer 10 percent of daily sales to the location owner if we man the carts and 20 percent if they do.”

Tillage and cover crops

Sweet grows only sweet corn and has done that for years.

“Some of our land has been in sweet corn continuously for 75 years,” he said.

But, he said the system is sustainable because his cover crop system is really a rotation. All sweet corn is followed by a ryegrass cover crop. The living mulch provides protection and produces organic matter the soil needs for good tilth. Tillage instruments are no longer used, so the soil carbon is not depleted nor is soil structure disturbed.

He uses paraquat to kill the ryegrass each spring, then plants using a planter equipped with coulters that till a strip and leave the row centers undisturbed.

Cooking instructions

Sweet said the secret to good sweet corn is flavor. In recent years, he said, the SH2 varieties have gotten better. They no longer have the tough pericarp, so eating quality is better. They will grow in colder soils than they once did. Isolation is not a problem, since his land is chopped into small parcels with few other crops anywhere near. He’s switched to all SH2.

“They’ll stay sweeter a week longer than Se varieties,” he said.

He tries new varieties, and uses about 20 of 65- to 85-day maturity.

Each year, he plants about 25 acres around April 1. Using plastic row covers, he tries to have some corn ready for the July 4 weekend. He didn’t make it this year.

“We had 20 inches of snow fall on April 11,” he said. “The snow didn’t hurt the corn, but it cut off the sunlight so it didn’t grow.”

The result: No Sweet sweet corn on July 4.

Another secret of flavorful sweet corn is cooking it right. On his Web site (www.sweetscorn.com) and in the packages, Sweet offers customers instructions on how to cook sweet corn – boiled in water, heated in the microwave or cooked on the grill.

“Most people tend to overcook their sweet corn,” he said. “It is much better undercooked than overcooked.”

Sweet offers a service for parties and festivals, in which he caters roasted corn.

While the Sweet sweet corn generates a good income, Sweet said he and his wife didn’t encourage their children to join into the business, which has been a Sweet family trademark since his grandfather started it in 1923. Their area has urbanized. His land is scattered into 27 parcels. Irrigation is difficult because he has to buy city water.

So, while his business has been successful and seems to offer a useful service to people around Cleveland, Sweet is concerned about the ongoing loss of farmland and the continual difficulties of trying to grow his gourmet product in an urbanizing environment.




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