MANHATTAN, Kan. – "Corny as Kansas in August" has changed meaning since the highlight of summer gatherings at Grandpa’s farm was fresh sweet corn, just picked from the garden.

Today’s shoppers might tie the change to the bicolored yellow-and-white ears that Americans quickly developed a taste for in recent seasons. A new yellow-white-red variety will be joining the checkerboard corns in limited markets this year.

But, color differences are the least of sweet corn’s recent improvements for gardens and kitchens alike, said Chuck Marr, horticulturist at Kansas State University.

For one thing, corn plants no longer have to grow as "high as an elephant’s eye" to produce lots of good eating. Many garden varieties peak at 3 to 4 feet tall. This has brought corn into suburban, as well as rural garden plots, said Marr, who is K-State Research and Extension’s vegetable crops specialist.

Getting ears straight from garden to pot to plate isn’t necessary anymore, either.

"With traditional varieties, the kernels’ sugar level would literally diminish by the hour, as soon as the ear left the plant. Sometimes the sugar level wasn’t all that high to begin with, so you didn’t want to waste any time," Marr said.

Plant breeders have changed that. At first, they were trying to develop hybrids with a sweeter taste. They came up with a number, which today’s seed catalogs and packets tend to call super or extra sweet.

Along the way, however, breeders produced corns that not only start out with a higher sugar content but also have a slower rate of sugar breakdown, once picked.

"I guess I still think fresh-picked corn tastes best. But now, corn on the cob you buy in the store can also taste sweet, rather than tough and starchy. That’s why the availability and choices in fresh corn are so much better in the supermarket than they were just a few years ago," the horticulturist said.

Fresh corn becomes a meal alternative much earlier now, too. In Kansas, for example, most sweet corn gets planted around May 1, when soil temperatures are above 60 F. So, with just 65 to 75 days needed before harvest, early-maturing varieties really can make Kansas "corny in August" – on the dinner table, as well as in the garden. Midseason varieties can extend corn-on-the-cob eating into early fall. In many years, late-season varieties can keep fresh sweet corn available until winter arrives.

For gardeners, another improvement since Grandpa’s day is the disease resistance bred into many modern corn varieties. This includes resistance to maize dwarf mosaic, bacterial wilt, and smut.

"Many of the new hybrids are easy to grow," Marr said. "Even with all the changes, however, they won’t be your most efficient garden crop. They’ll still take quite a bit of space, particularly if you’re growing a super-sweet corn and need to keep it 50 to 100 feet away from a more traditional type, to prevent cross-pollination. For best production, they’ll also need higher levels of fertilizer and irrigation than most vegetable plants get.

"Even so, nothing’s quite as good as fresh-picked corn in the summertime. Plus, corn is excellent for freezing or canning, extending your taste of summer into year-round eating."

Marr’s publication on growing sweet corn – which lists K-State’s field-tested variety recommendations – is available at every Kansas county Extension office and on the World Wide Web ( http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/hort2 ).