How Do You Know When Indian Corn Is Ready to Pick
Caren White is a Chief Gardener and teacher at Home Gardeners School. She has been associated with Rutgers Gardens for over a decade.
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Colorful Indian, or ornamental, corn has long been associated with fall and especially the Thanksgiving holiday. In fact, it is the corn that was eaten at that first Thanksgiving repast.
What is Corn?
Corn (Zea mays) does not occur naturally in the wild. It is a manmade plant, produced within the final 10,000 years via hybridization of a native grass called teosinte that originated in United mexican states.
Wild teosinte, the ancestor of modern corn
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The modernistic corn that we are familiar with comes in three varieties. Sweet corn has been bred for human consumption. It is college in carbohydrate than dent corn or Indian corn. Its white or yellow kernels can exist canned, frozen, cooked or eaten directly from the cob.
White Sweet Corn
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Dent corn, likewise known as field corn, is too white or yellow and characterized by a pronounced paring in each kernel. Information technology is less sweet than sweet corn and is fed to livestock. Paring corn is also used in industrial products such as ethanol too every bit candy into many of the foods we eat. It is the source of the controversial high fructose corn syrup. Both sweet and paring corns are recent introductions.
Yellowish Dent Corn
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Indian corn is the original corn that was bred from teosinte grass by Native Americans. It is called flintstone corn considering its kernels are "hard as flint". The kernels comprise less moisture than dent or sweet corn and dry better with less chance of spoiling, an important consideration for Native Americans who depended on the dried corn to feed themselves until the next corn crop ripened the post-obit year. This is the corn that the Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to grow. Information technology is still used in dishes such as polenta and hominy.
Indian corn, the original corn bred from teosinte
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How to Grow Indian Corn
Indian corn is easy to abound in your backyard. Corn is pollinated by the usual pollinating insects such equally bees, but besides via the current of air blowing the pollen onto neighboring plants. All three types of corn will cantankerous-pollinate with each other so if you are too growing sweetness or dent corn, make certain that you lot constitute each blazon of corn at least 300 yards apart to avoid cantankerous-pollination. Fix your soil past roto-tilling or turning your soil 6 to 12 inches deep. Corn are heavy feeders, and then work in a good corporeality of compost or leafage mulch.
Yous can plant your seeds in either rows or hills. If you are planting them in rows, plant one seed every 4 inches in rows that are 18 to 24 inches apart. You will desire to thin your seedlings to 12 inches apart when they reach a height of 4 inches. Make sure to weed aggressively so that the corn does non accept to compete with the weeds for nutrients. Side dress your rows with compost or 10-x-10 fertilizer after four weeks and and so every 4 weeks until the corn has ripened.
Go on your corn well-weeded so that it doesn't accept to compete for water and nutrients.
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Alternatively, you tin plant your seeds in hills like the Native Americans did. Plant 3 to 4 seeds per colina, with the hills spaced 12 inches autonomously. When your plants are 4 inches tall, thin them, removing any sickly or deformed plants. You lot can transplant good for you seedlings into any empty spaces on your hills. Weed aggressively and fertilize monthly.
Native Americans used to found their fields using the Three Sisters: corn, pumpkins and beans. The pumpkin vines shaded out the weeds, the corn provided back up for the beans to climb and the beans provided vital nitrogen for the nitrogen hungry corn and pumpkins. All legumes, such equally beans, are nitrogen fixing and are oft used equally cover crops by modern day farmers.
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How to Harvest and Dry Indian Corn
Indian corn is ripe and ready for harvest when the outer husks turn brown. Removing the ears from the stalks is like shooting fish in a barrel. Simply grasp the stalk with 1 mitt and the ear with your other hand, and so rip the ear off with a downward move.
Indian corn is harvested when the husks turn brown
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To dry out your corn, peel the husk all the way dorsum from the ear, exposing the all of the kernels. Necktie a string around the base of the husk and hang your corn in a dry, dark place. Make sure your corn is not exposed to the sun while it is drying. Sunlight will fade the bright colors.
Indian corn hung to dry
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Test the kernels every few days past pushing against them with your fingernail. When they are completely hard and you are unable to printing into them with your nail, your corn is dry and gear up for use every bit decoration or in a arts and crafts. To preserve your corn, brush a glaze of varnish on it.
Questions & Answers
Question: I live in New United mexican states and was given real native indian corn kernels from a local Native American at a festival concluding August. What month should I institute the kernels in mounds? Does it need to be planted in a sunny area or tin can information technology exercise ok if in partial shade?
Reply: How lucky you are to take been given native corn past a Native American. As well bad that they didn't also recommend when and how to constitute it! Corn has a long growing season and so information technology is usually planted 2 weeks later on your terminal frost. The soil should have warmed to about 60F by and so. The seeds need warm soil to germinate. If your soil is too cool, they volition just sit there waiting for it to warm up. You can plant in mounds or in blocks. Like most vegetables, corn needs full lord's day. It will not grow in the shade, even partial shade.
Question: How do you save Indian corn to plant?
Reply: Choose the best kernels from the best cobs and after properly drying the kernels, store them in an airtight container somewhere where information technology is cool and dark (out of the sunlight) and not boiling. Many people store seeds that they are saving in their refrigerators.
© 2014 Caren White
Caren White (author) on May 21, 2019:
Soaking seeds before planting is a technique used to soften the seedcoats of seeds with particularly difficult seedcoats. The reason that they are so hard is that they need to survive being eaten by birds. Corn is a man-made plant. The seeds were never intended to be spread by birds so the seedcoats are soft. Additionally, considering they are man-made, the seeds and the embryos are very delicate. Hot h2o would kill the embryos rendering the seeds sterile.
Marcey on April 29, 2019:
I read on a website to soak the seeds in hot water for a few hours before planting to soften them. Is this recommended?
Caren White (author) on March thirty, 2019:
Stephen, have fun growing your corn and then crafting your autumn decor!
stephen on March thirty, 2019:
Thank you for all the info. im growing about 20 plants as a hobby and decor in the fall.
Caren White (author) on October 31, 2014:
So glad yous enjoyed it, Shraddhachawla! And thanks for reading and commenting.
shraddhachawla on October 31, 2014:
Informative Hub ! Information technology has all the possible details well-nigh varieties of corn and the method to cultivate information technology.
Caren White (author) on October 31, 2014:
And then glad that you lot enjoyed information technology, Suzette! I have a bad habit at looking at things like decorations and wondering "how is that grown?" Thank you lot for reading and commenting.
Suzette Walker from Taos, NM on October 31, 2014:
Thank you for instructing u.s.a. on how to grow Indian corn. This was interesting and informative to read. So advisable for fall and the coming holidays.
Caren White (author) on October 17, 2014:
Thank you, Flourish. I'm glad that you lot enjoyed it.
FlourishAnyway from USA on October 16, 2014:
This was interesting. I didn't know about the iii sisters.
Caren White (writer) on October 15, 2014:
Give thanks y'all Heidi. I love the history behind then many holiday traditions. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Heidi Thorne from Chicago Area on October 14, 2014:
Did not know corn was a "manmade" plant. Interesting! Corking hub for this time of yr.
Source: https://dengarden.com/gardening/Growing-and-Drying-Indian-Corn#:~:text=Indian%20corn%20is%20ripe%20and,off%20with%20a%20downward%20motion.
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