Golden Bantam Sweet Corn

Eight-inch ears with deep golden kernels on sturdy five-foot stalks, usually two ears per plant. This is old-style corn sugar — real corn flavor rather than the candy sweetness of modern hybrids — and it converts to starch fast, so get it from stalk to pot the same hour if you can. Plant in blocks of at least four short rows rather than one long one; it is wind pollinated and needs the company.

Where it comes from. Introduced by Burpee in 1902; before it, yellow corn was thought fit only for livestock.