Volunteer Painted Mountain Corn

[digitS']

I could hardly believe this.

The ground was tilled several weeks ago. An ear of corn or 2 were missed last year. There were 3 mornings of frost . . . these little volunteers survived that after sprouting in some tragically cold soil!

It is a flour corn and this was my Sisters Garden in 2011. I used some of the seed to make cornbread. It was delicious!

The breeder calls it "cold hardy northern corn" and he's not kidding! Here is The Painted Mountain Story (click).

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

What are its groiwth characteristics?

 

[digitS']

The 1st time I grew it, I'd have said that it was a very fast growing, tall corn. Then, I didn't grow it for about 5 years. Last year, I read a description and it said something like "a five foot corn." It grew that way for me in 2011 but that's not how I remember it from 'o7, or whenever it was. Some of the plants must have hit 9 or 10 feet!

It is a gene pool with an amazing variety of seed color. The ears are somewhat small compared to another ornamental corn that I've grown and compared to the common types of sweet corn.

It just does remarkably well with cool weather.

Here is a picture of a couple of pieces of the cornbread I made last fall:

sorry about the lighting

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

Mmmm! Dark corn bread! I just might grow that painted mountain next year along with my Gaspe Flint, in opposite sides of the garden. Maybe I'll cross a couple too, so long as I can keep the Gaspe flint on the other side pure.

 

[ducks4you]

That is really neat. NOT to rant but, gee whiz, WWWHHHHHHYYYYYY do the farmers behind my property use "herbicide" to kill pre-emergent corn, which is REALLY volunteer corn from the previous harvest?!?!? It' JUST like yours.
Thanks for sharing the pictures. You need to tell us how you prepared your corn meal from the corn itself. Never done it, myself.

 

[lesa]

Another reason to love mother nature! I had some broccoli self-seed this year. I just love that!

 

[ninnymary]

Steve, will these have enough time to grow and produce? What are their chances?

Mary

 

[digitS']

They should be able to grow and maturing a crop, Mary. They aren't lined up very well and there aren't very many of the plants. It may well come down to where the heck I'm going to put the soybeans this year !

You need to tell us how you prepared your corn meal from the corn itself.

Ducks', last fall I posted a bunch of pictures on a thread about the meal I made from the Sisters Garden: beans (chili), cornbread and squash pie . I guess I have never quite figured out Picasa photo gallery! None of my Picasa pictures from that thread have been moved or deleted but they aren't on that thread :/ now!

I'll try again and show you my modest little peasant's meal. I won't be surprised if these pictures disappear in a little while:

Here is the Painted Mountain corn after soaking:

This all was "Seedcorn's" idea. It had never occurred to me to use a food processor with soaked grain to mill it and make bread.

I used Albers regular cornbread recipe. What I did differently was 3 things:

Since the seed was whole & then soaked, I measured it before soaking and decided to use 1 1/2 cups of corn and call that 1 cup of corn meal no matter what it amounted to after soaking and processing.

I sifted the meal thru the screen and ran the heavy stuff back thru the food processor, then sifted it again and discarded about 2 tablespoons. Those 2 Tablespoons would have made for some serious chewing that I decided to avoid .

Then, evaporated milk was used instead of regular milk, 1:1.

Of course, cornbread is made with wheat flour but, you know, I think I might have been able to use wheat kernels and soaked them right along with the corn kernels.



Anyway, I had fun AND a good meal .

Steve

 

[momofdrew]

Steve I thought you made corn meal by grinding dried corn kernels...to get flour like consistancy???

 

[digitS']

Seedcorn told me I didn't have to . . .

He was right!

The dry kernels keep quite well - probably better than if they were milled. Soak overnight - after all, you are going to add a liquid during your bread-making, right?

Since the cornbread recipe (click) calls for 1 cup of milk, I just used 1 cup of evaporated milk instead.

Steve