The Corn

Post date: Jul 25, 2012 1:15:47 PM

This year we have a good sized garden. Yes, yes, most of you are laughing and saying "It's Huge!" That's a fair statement, but large gardens can support corn and corn is awesome. Corn on the cob, corn chowder, corn salsa, tortillas, chips, we can go on and on. Our goal this year was to plant unique heirloom verities of corn; Blue corn, red corn and purple corn. Each selected for a specific reason.

Side tangent: We purchased all of our corn seeds from Trade Winds Fruit online store. We are very pleased with the seeds. Based on the condition of this year's soil (previous post Solid Waste), we have good number of growing corn stalks.

One of the blue corn varieties we planted is Hopi Blue. It is an old variety well known for the awesome blue corn chips and great blue corn tortillas made from its kernels. The second blue corn we planted is a miniature variety. Only reaching 3 feet in height Blue Jade is a sweet corn known for its ability to grow well in many environments, even in containers.

Blue Jade

The red corn is called Bloody Butcher. It too is a sweet corn variety but the kernels are a deep red color. This heirloom is best eaten straight off the cob. It should be mentioned that modified American sweet corn varieties sold at most farm stands are much sweeter than heirlooms.

The purple corn is Maize Morado and is well known through South America for the array of drinks it produces called Chicha. Chicha - Google it is too long to explain in our blog (or click here for Wikipedia's answer). We plan to use this corn to make some home-brew. Can you picture it? Home-brew naturally colored a deep, rich purple? It sounds fantastic! We will post more on that after harvest.

Maize Morado - Late July, then Early August!