La Nina continues to impact OUR Crops
We’ve started harvesting our first summer cobs this season, a week later than anticipated thanks to the ongoing impacts of the La Nina weather pattern.
Spring has seen consistent rainfall and lower temperatures than normal, all impacting the crops across our farm. Gisborne’s climate is normally abundant with sunshine and warmer temperatures making it’s the perfect location to grow the tastiest sweet corn says our General Manager of Farm, Gordon McPhail.
“At LeaderBrand, we pride ourselves on our sweet corn grown right here in Gizzy. The sun and soil are perfectly aligned to grow, what we believe is, the best corn available.
“This spring has brought us some challenges with a lot of rain. However, the last couple of weeks, has seen the weather settle down a bit and we’ve had enough hours of sunshine just in time for harvesting our first crop of corn later this week.
“The more settled weather will also help our later harvests of corn, set to be picked throughout January.
“We spend hours testing varieties of corn from all over the world. Sometimes trialling more than 200 different types of corn on the farm, all to ensure that we’re growing the perfect match to our conditions. It’s all about the taste, and the sweeter and creamier the better,” says Gordon.
“Once the sweet corn has reached maturity, it’s time to harvest. We don’t use machines here. Every cob is hand-picked to make sure that we’ve delivering the highest quality corn to your supermarket. Every crate is checked by our team before it leaves the field,” he says.
Last year, the supermarkets said that an amazing 1,149,002 corn on the cob were sold in the 14 days before Christmas, that’s 57 ears of sweet corn every second. And that corn was in the top five items with the biggest lift in sales in the fortnight prior to Christmas.
“Sweet corn is such an important part of a Kiwi summer, we’re not surprised that New Zealander’s are wanting to add corn to their Christmas menu, especially if this year your meal is focused around a barbeque. Whether you cook it on the grill with or without the husk, sweet corn slightly chard with lashing of butter is delicious and easy,” says Gordon.
“A great tip for checking the freshness of the corn is to look for a cob that has a tight green husk and is rounder and fatter at the ends. We don’t recommend pulling back the husk in store as that dries out the cob quicker,” he says.
Not only does corn taste good, it’s great for you too. Corn is packed full of antioxidants and great for healthy vision. It’s also a great source of fibre, rich in folic acid and vitamin C. Plus kids love it!
Kiwis can’t get enough of summer produce and sweet corn is the number one veggie they want.
Make sure you grab some today.