Heritage Corn

[Helena]

Been reading in MENS this month about the Indian corn. Has anyone tried growing this and how well did it grow for you. they menioned that you would need an acre??..but have you planted less ?? The price is high $$..but thought it might be interesting to try it ?? guess I will aalso give the company a call too... Anyone ??

[mskrieger]

What do you want the corn for? Flour? Or meal? Some "indian" corn is easy to grind into fine flour; other 'indian' corn (usually referred to as 'flint' corn) is ground into coarse meal for polenta, johnny cakes, etc. The 'dent' corns are crosses between flint and flour corns.

You don't need an acre to grow it, just however much space for however much corn you want to grow.

If you're in PA, you might be interested in the Garland flint corn on offer from Fedco this year. It's bred from heirloom flint corns that do well in the Northeast. (You will need a small handmill to grind it if you want to make your own polenta or corn meal with it. They're pretty inexpensive, around $50 new or you may be able to pick a good one up used at a mud sale or whatnot.)

[amwitched]

I was given a handful of dark blue indian corn by one of my clients. She is an elder in our local Native American society. I planted the seeds in a little corner of my garden last spring and it grew beautifully. The plants were between 5'-6' tall, lush and very productive. You certainly don't need to plant a whole acre just to have good pollination.

PM me with your address and I will be happy to send you some seed.

[crwilson]

I planted a variety called earth tones dent and besides being very beautiful it is very productive. I have a very short growing season like 90 days frost free if im lucky and it did wonderful. I didnt look after it very well and it grew about 9ft tall and had 1 or 2 large cobs per plant. I only had a patch about 15x15 and I cant imagine how much an acre would produce you would fill your house with the stuff. I lost about 80% of the corn to neighbors children and raccoons the kids really liked the cobs and couldnt quit stealing it along with my pumpkins. but still probably got about 5 pounds of the stuff. It makes delicous corn bread and probably flour didnt try it though.

[larryfoster]

I always heard that cross pollination was a problem because of distance the pollen can travel.

Last year I planted 3 kinds-golden bantam which is heirloom, a blacl corn a friend gave me and some hybrid silver queen.

I'm only doing the first 2 this year

[goatlady]

I planted some Painted Mountain last year - it did very well for me. I like it cause it only gets 4' tall so the winds around here does not blow it over! The reasoning for planting an acre is so that the seed you save IS a good mix of genetics. I have heard you can get good results planting 100 corn seed in a square and that seed saved will be excellent genetics of the type. Anything less - supposedly- begins to water down the traits of the seed and eventually you have very poor results.

[siletz]

Corn really suffers from inbreeding depression if you save seeds from less than 100 plants (200 is even better). After a few generations, the plants start looking stunted and sickly. But, with 1 foot spacing, you could fit over 200 plants in a 15' x 15' square. If you don't plan to save your seeds, though, a little plot would be just fine. You do need to make sure your neighbors don't have corn growing, or it will cross with yours. I also grew Painted Mountain corn last summer and was very impressed with it. It's a flour type corn and this summer I'm going to give a flint type corn a try, as I personally have more uses for it corn meal than corn flour.

[vicki in NW OH]

I'm going to try Floriani this year. My only concern is lodging with this corn. Will plant in trenches and hill really well as the corn grows. This corn has the reputation for making the absolute best polenta, cornbread, etc. Seed was from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. The seed is the most beautiful color of rusty red, just gorgeous.