The varieties: Corn

Now that I have discussed the establishment of the garden I would like to further mention the varieties that I have used thus far.

I figured that I would start with corn. Corn is a surprisingly well adapted crop. Even in this horrible environment you see farmers plant field corn and it completes it's life cycle without the aide of water. I do not know that modern sweet corn is that well adapted, but it does not matter because I am not interested in those varieties. In the interest of my health and teeth I am primarily interested in low sugar content sweet corn. If you have never had a more traditional corn than you are missing out. Traditional sweet corn has a much denser flavor. That is to say that they taste more like corn.

The first year I planted two varieties: Southern Gentleman and Black Aztec corn.
I loved the Black Aztec and so did my daughter, the wife not so much. It had no sweetness to it but had a strong taste of corn. The plants were dark green and tall. All of the neighbors were really impressed with the stand.

I found the Southern Gentleman to be much sweeter, but the ears were very thin and small. There was nearly no corn on an ear. The plant itself was also very small and did not impress in the garden.

Neither variety wilted or faltered from lack of water. They did well with much gardening. It was an unusually hard year and I finally watered them in about July.

If it were up to me I would just have planted more Black Aztec. It would have been my go to variety and that would have been that. However, as I mentioned my wife was not impressed with it so the search continued.

So, the following year in 2015 I bought and planted Golden Bantam. This variety was supposed to be the go-to before modern hybrids.

With one year of experience under my belt I began to search for ways to improve my methods and yields. I had two main problems the first year. Corn borer and lack of pollination. I had planted the corn in two long rows, a common noob mistake. So in the following year I planted corn in a small square and inter-planted some Borage. (Borage is a recommended companion crop for corn when it comes to the corn borer.) It worked, my garden only had two Borage plants that survived but I had nearly no damage from the worm. As of when this was written Borage even has some appreciation among commercial farmers as a companion plant.

IT WORKS. 

The Golden Bantam proved to be exactly what we were looking for. It has a strong corn flavor reminiscent of old world varieties but with a mild sweetness that my wife requires. The harvest was mixed. Some plants did really well and others did not. Same way with the ears of corn. Some were big and full others were small. I kept some of the best fullest ears for seed and ate the rest.

I would like to state here that I have nothing against hybrids I simply do not want to grow them because you cannot keep the seed and get true to type varieties. My goal is to create a strong garden with well adapted plants and that simply cannot be done with hybrids.

The current methods of gardening pushed by the Ag universities is not well adapted because they grow seed in a different state than it is to be consumed. It is really all about the money, not about sustainability or what is good for the environment.