OP Corn varieties

[wildseed57]

Hi all, as I'm pretty new here and have been reading as any of the different post as time allows one that I came across was by Allen
Who was asking about breeding Corn, this is a very interesting subject to me. When I was a young boy in the 50's my dad who grew up during the depression grew some corn that he had gotten from some other farmer in the Midwest that grew over ten feet tall and had up to 8 large ears of corn on the stocks, the corn as I remember was not very sweet as today's corn is, but was fairly edible and some of it was used for the table and the rest went to feed the goats that my dad raised. When I got out of the Navy in the early 70's I tried to locate some of old vegetable varieties that my dad grew along with that type of corn, but I have never been able to locate that one type. I suppose it is long gone, but has anyone seen or grown this type of corn at some point. I suppose it could have been a type of flour corn, but as I have a hard time trying to remember what the corn seeds looked like, I can't tell you much about it other than how high it grew and how many ears it had. As I donate a lot of seeds to the kids at the school here in Norwood Missouri I thought it might be fun to try and get them some really unusual corn to try and grow. I've already given out about 200 tomato seeds, 200 baby Korean watermelon seeds, 50 sweet peppers and 50 eggplant seeds all of which were gladly handed out to the kids by my youngest grand daughter, the seeds sure beat the one cabbage plant the the teaches gave out to the kids. I feel that if you can teach one kid to grow and feed themselves from their own little garden, they will never go hungry so long as they can grow their own food, even if its just a couple plants in a container.
Anyway I'm hoping to find some like that, if anyone can help me or knows where I can find corn like that, please let me know. I do have some Bloody Butcher Corn and some that is called Wade's Giant Indian corn that I will be growing, so that I can hand it out for the kids to grow next year in case I can't find something better or more unusual. If it taste good so much the better.
George W. Z5-6 MO. USA

[DarJones]

do a search for 'six shooter corn'

DarJones

[wildseed57]

Hi I looked up Six shooter corn, which could be it by the discription as for the hight it sounds a bit like the giant silo that gets to be 10 to 15 feet tall, although its for mainly livestock feed. So maybey it is the six shooter, the giant Silo would make a good stand of corn for doing a three sister's planting. Did anyone ever find out how well the Portugues corn that looked like a pineapple did and if it was a flour or sweet type? I don't think it would grow well in Missouri as it may need a longer season that what we have, but it sure looked good. I like grilling my corn and dredging it in a mix or lime juice, butter and chili powder, goes great with other Mexican dishes.
George W. Z5-6 MO. USA

[Alan]

Hey WildSeed,

Glad to have you here and to see that you are donating seed to a good cause my friend. We have a community garden getting started in the neighboring town that I just donated seed too recently and over the past few years I have cowbirded some seed out to my high schools ag program for those who might be interested in persuing agronomics and plant breeding.

As Fushion said above, six shooter may be similar to what you are thinking.

There is also another corn that the Swiss Amish grow here that they call Kentucky Mammoth. I have been trying to get seed but as of yet no luck, they are hard to get to give up the few secrets they still have.

It gets roughly 10 foot tall, tillers quite a bit, and gets 4-5 good primary sweet SU type cobs per plant.

I will look into it for you.

Some of us here are persuing crosses between various sweet corns and chires baby corn. Inspired by Alan Kapuler telling us of his cross between red miracle and chires baby which yields multiple good ears per plant.

Alan will bean us to market with his but we will expand upon the pallete available to everyone in following years.

My own will be Astronomy Domine crossed to chires. Should be fun.

[wildseed57]

Hi Alan and thanks, you work sounds pretty interesting I will look forward to your results, BTW the kids went wild over the seeds I donated , usually they just get flower seeds or cabbage plants, my grand daughter who handed them out was the hero of the day and made
a lot of new friends. she came home with the biggest grin you ever saw and was just bubbling all evening . it made me really happy to see her that way. I wish I still had room to grow a lot of corn, sadly I'm stuck with just a small space just large enough to grow for a small taste and some for seeds.. We got hit pretty hard by hail and I lost a lot of my seedlings I had growing, so I will have to replace them and hope that I have a good mild season..
George

[Petronius Arbiter II]

Hi, Albuquerque, New Mexico here. I just joined Alan's board specifically to get in on this thread, though I know it's about a year old now.

I have a few-- VERY few-- seeds of Mexican June dent corn, which is one of those big white dent corn types that can grow up to fourteen feet and sometimes put out four or five huge ears per stalk, maybe even more. It is my understanding that just as with almost any corn, it can be used for roasting ears or even boiled corn on the cob, if it is harvested at just the right time. Though of course, it's usually used for corn meal, hominy, masa, chicos, etc.

I'm trying to find a source for a pound or so of Mexican June so I can break it up into small packets and sell them on Ebay, which is the kind of thing I'm going to be doing a lot of in the next few months or years. I'll let y'all know if I manage to find a source.

I don't think Six Shooter is what you're looking for. As far as I know, it rarely gets over nine feet tall and the ears are kind of small. If anybody knows where I can get some of that Kentucky Mammoth, I'd sure like to try it out down here where the soil and the weather can grow great corn if you "just add water."