I always grow some sweetcorn every year in my vegetable patch even though where I live it does tend to get a bit windy. I have found that if I plant close enough, then the sweetcorn doesn't suffer too badly, so I plant them in a block making sure that they don't overshadow any other vegetables I am growing.

I grow my sweetcorn from seed and I do this my using modular seed trays that I fill with multi-purpose compost. I place one seed in each module and just push them under the surface of the compost. I then give them a really good watering.

Once the seeds have germinated I then watch out for when the roots get down to the base of the tray before I plant them out. Before I do plant them out I water the ground well and make sure that this my seedlings are placed in a block rather than a row. The beauty of planting sweetcorn in a block is that it stands a better chance of pollinating as well as helping it cope with windier conditions.

I place my block at the end of one of my vegetable plots so that it doesn't block out the sun on any other vegetables I might be growing and have found that this has been a really successful way of growing my plants. Last year we had a deliciously sweet crop that I harvested late in the summer.

I did have a bumper crop and decided to freeze some so that we could enjoy the lovely flavours of our home-grown sweetcorn at a later date. I did this by blanching them before freezing them, as this way I kept all the sweetness in the kernels. I was very pleased at the outcome as we had lovely sweetcorn ready to eat for the month ahead and there is nothing nicer than home-grown sweetcorn with butter, salt and freshly milled black pepper.