Been growing Bloody butcher corn, now I want to get funky.

[middle]

I started seriously gardening only 3-4 years ago. I decided I want to grow corn, but I'm a bigger fan of hominy, grits, and polenta than I am of sweet corn. So I found Bloody butcher corn and gave it a try. I've been saving it for 4 years now, but have eaten very little. I thought about switching it up this year and trying a new variety, but I feel like I've got a good landrace going now. I'm just not sure where to go from here. Perhaps introduce another dent corn? I guess I want a better yield. 

Also, if anyone knows where to get a cheap grain mill or a good hominy recipe - let me know. 

[steev]

I've had good results with Pungo Creek Bloody Butcher.

[farmermike]

There’s a good thread on this site about nixtamalization.

alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/8153/adventures-nixtamalization

He uses 2 tablespoons of pickling lime to 1/2 gallon of water and 1 quart of corn. Then boil until the pericarp starts to slip (about 15 mins). Rinse the pericarps off in a colander. At this point the nixtamalized corn is still basically raw and hard. He grinds it to make wet masa for tortillas, which then get cooked after being pressed.

To make hominy, you have to put it back in a pot of fresh water and boil until it becomes soft enough to eat (maybe another 45 mins?).

I found lots of much more complicated hominy recipes online. This one was the simplest and it turned out great. I’ve only tried it with white dent corn so far. Oxbowfarm mentioned that corns with a red pericarp (like bloody butcher) took a lot longer time boiling in the lime water before the pericarp began to slip.

I have an electric Wonder Mill, which works great, but it only makes a fine flour — no matter what kind of corn you grind. I think I’m also going to order a Corona hand crank mill for making polenta (from flint corn) and corn meal (from dent corn).

Good luck! I love growing grain corn too.

I did a mass cross of dent corns a couple years ago, but had a chance to grow it out again. I posted about it here: alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/9215/corn-harvest-2017

[RpR]

Go to Sandhill web site and check the corn varieties they have.
Yield is most often only as good as the soil.

[middle]

Secondary question. What would happen if I threw in glass gem corn? I just got some as a gift? I'm wondering which genes would dominate over time.

[blueadzuki]

Glass gem is a very hard flint. If you mix that in, you might get a Flint/ dent mix (or, more accurately, a mixture of dent, hard flint, soft flint and everything in between) which might be too hard to grind with whatever mill you get. On the other hand, flint is better for polenta than dent is so it's you choice.

If you want the colors but want to keep it dent, try Earth Tones.

[middle]

Thanks! If I can make a good hominy, that's all I really care about.

[esoteric_agriculture]

If Hominy is your primary use for corn, may I suggest you try one of the many big white dent corns, one of the many strains and variants of Hickory King would be ideal. That type of corn is great for Hominy.

[massachusettsgrower]

I did in reverse of your process.  That is, I tried buying Bloody Butcher and eating it.  I found it to be a maize that as I saw it was unappetizing to eat, and I still don't to this day understand why it is still carried and offered as seed.  Of course now I know more different ways to prepare corn to eat, maybe it would pass muster with me better if i tried it now.

There are so many lines that need to be grown, and observations made about their success in your area that i discourage the idea of breeding 'our own'.  Respect for native american breeders of centuries past and also early settlers from other continents should mean (I think) finding out what they had, and hopefully even purifying existing inbred lines of culls to make the lines stronger.)

Get to know the several completely different sorts of corn.  Some flour corns are very soft and they were selected to be that because they grind easy.   These are some of the most overlooked and to lay people unknown corns.  People are often stunned to hear of such corns, seeing my grow out and assuming its some sort of sweet corn, naturally, because that's what they're used to.  

I keep three or four lines by growing one a year, growing it again every fourth year.  See?  And there's no problem with germination, these maizes descended through the centuries to us tough.  It's how they survived.  And we will need them again as we need to be tough the poisoning of the commercial conventional grains that are poisoning us now as they lay hate down on the soil.

[steev]

I like the snotty rationality of your post; straight up real, buyah!

[reed]

Sept 13, 2019 21:17:23 GMT -5 massachusettsgrower said:

There are so many lines that need to be grown, and observations made about their success in your area that i discourage the idea of breeding 'our own'.  Respect for native american breeders of centuries past and also early settlers from other continents should mean (I think) finding out what they had, and hopefully even purifying existing inbred lines of culls to make the lines stronger.)

While I understand and sympathize with the sentiment I disagree. Largely because my attempts along that line have mostly been miserable failures. I don't have the seasons or the land to trial lots of varieties and I'v been almost completely unable to identify let alone acquire any that may have had their history in my geographical area. 

I also on contemplation, do agree that breeding my own isn't the best way to go. That's because in my attempts to do so I'm finding that to a large degree, the corn isn't cooperating. I have in my minds eye a vision of what my new varieties will look like and it says, too bad buddy, this is what you get. 

I think that is really what the natives and settlers did too. They got some seeds and the seeds grew into what the seeds wanted to grow into. They may have selected their favorites as I do but largely I think over the decades and centuries the corn turned itself into regional varieties by itself. I'v learned as they may have, that applying to heavy of a hand on selection just for my own preference is a bad idea.   

Corn is different to me than most other crops, I don't know why and although I don't try to preserve or recreate what those that came before had I feel a connection when planting and harvesting it. I don't think they care that my corn isn't exactly the same as their's or even that I might be using some of theirs make mine. Like I said I'm not doing it, the corn is.

All I do is plant it and that is the same as what they did, I think what I'm doing might make them happy. I also might be weirdly superstitions but I think they may not like it if I try to recreate or preserve their's. Knowing very little, in fact almost nothing about them who the heck am I do do that?

[nkline]

The way I see it; never before has there been such easy access to corn germplasm. The natives were stuck with the corn they had, to some extent, if something failed one year it may have gotten lost. As a group of people migrated they may have just bottle necked there corn, this could have been to the earliest of there seeds, or most tolerant of some disease, or soil type, etc. Now if we go to a seed bank we can order stuff from all over the world, with tons of variety, haveing traits we could never shake out of our “own” corn line, we can introgress these traits and make some truely unique stuff. Cast a wide net and see what shakes out, you are in the golden age of plant breeding.

[reed]

Yea, they sure couldn't jump on web and track down what they wanted. There are easily 200 strains in my collection but most are now mixed into my own stock of what I hope will eventually settle into something somewhat uniform for the traits I want. As a general rule what grows best for me are the eastern flints. The western flour corns are not especially happy here nor the more southern ones like Cherokee White.

I'v so far only discovered two that do pretty well as pure varieties. One a sweet corn called Aunt Mary's that was in fact supposed to have originated in my area and the other surprisingly, a Mexican landrace called Zapalote Chico which I got from GRIN. If I had the space for it I would preserve those two as they are but I'll use them to further incorporate into my breeding projects instead.

[walt]

Reed said "I think that is really what the natives and settlers did too. They got some seeds and the seeds grew into what the seeds wanted to grow into. They may have selected their favorites as I do but largely I think over the decades and centuries the corn turned itself into regional varieties by itself. I'v learned as they may have, that applying to heavy of a hand on selection just for my own preference is a bad idea.

Corn is different to me than most other crops, I don't know why and although I don't try to preserve or recreate what those that came before had I feel a connection when planting and harvesting it. I don't think they care that my corn isn't exactly the same as their's or even that I might be using some of theirs make mine. Like I said I'm not doing it, the corn is. "

I grew up drawing a lot, and I was concidered good at it.  But when I started breeding perennial grains at the Land Institute, I decided I should never draw a picture of what I was working toward.  In fact, I pretty much gave up drawing completely.  That wasn't a conscience thought.  Rather, if I couldn't draw what was in my heart and mind, why draw at all?  But I knew I didn't know what perennial grains would look like.  If I imposed a preconceived picture on them, I wouldn't be open to what I saw in front of me.  I let the plant populations lead the way.  I only imposed selection pressure on the populations for perennial habit and seed yield.

I'm not saying other should do this.  Working with a long domesticatd crop is different, and people are different.  Do what is best for you.