Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Every Colour under the Sun.





Every year I like to try to grow something that is hard to come by in your local shop.This year I have gone for Painted Mountain Corn.Painted Mountain contains every shade of color known to corn. The 4-5 foot stalks bear up to 2 narrow, 7 inch long cobs.Painted Mountain corn is ideal for growing in areas with a short growing season.

Painted Mountain is a Heirloom variety of corn. This means that the plants are open-pollinated (as opposed to hybrids) and so the the seeds can be saved from the crop and handed down from generation to generation.
The seeds I got for these came from Brown Envelope Seeds. Madeline, from Brown Envelope Seeds also keeps a blog. So stay tuned to see how I get on.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Pat, Your blog loooks great. My problem with blogging is as soon as I've got someething interesting to blog about, I'm too busy to write it. Painted Mountain Corn is a fascinating variety and you can read its story on http://seedweneed.com/index-1.html I met Dave Christiansen, who developed it, at a conference in Oregon a few years ago. The first time I grew it I sowed climbing beans at the same time. The beans swamped the corn and I forgot about it until I was harvesting the dried beans and found that in spite of disappearing under the beans they had managed to produce perfect little cobs. It is the hardiest corn I have ever grown and is easy to grind in a coffee grinder, to make polenta. It comes out pink!

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