So Ted, What are you going to do with all of that blue corn anyway?

[ali8780]

?????

[tulloch]

I love blue corn chips! Do you make them Ted? If so how about a recipe?

[Bugbear]

I love blue corn chips! Do you make them Ted? If so how about a recipe?

If you can find blue maize masa, you can make tortillas, then cut them into pieces, then use any of the online recipes for making tortilla chips. Some people fry them, some people bake them, and so on.

I don't know if you will find blue maize masa, but you should use masa of some sort, not regular corn meal.

Good luck.

[Bugbear]

All right, Ali, here we go.

Each ear of corn is put in a sealed envelope that is labeled with an alphanumeric code, B4.21 for example, and stored in a cool dry place. The code has the group letter, the plant number then the decimal number of the ear on the plant. The number is also used in a written description of the plant and ear.

When I replant the kernels or seeds from the ears, the code will be used to keep track of the plant that grows from each kernel, and an additional description of the kernel will be amended to the original plant description in my records by adding a link in the HTML file. This is for the second and beyond generations of the plants.

That's the boring and laborious part. The interesting part is watching the different phenotypic forms that arise from the gene pool of these plants. These are not like the ears of yellow or white sweet corn. They are much smaller, they curve and have irregularly shaped kernels and rows. Some of the rows of the ears spiral. The plants make multiple ears, and multiple ears on single nodes, so I might get three small ears around a larger ear in a single husk, with the smaller ears being somewhat flattened on one side. The plants are not ten feet tall like many modern corn plants, they are about six feet tall. The color tends to be dark blue, almost black, but with a few white kernels here and there, also a little green on some of the kernels. I don't have a good way to keep track of the color.

Anything interesting or useful gets special note in the records because I might want to start a separate line of plants that have those features. I will have to cover the silks of each ear for future planting because other people near by are going to try to grow corn and the pollen goes all over the place with the wind. I will also probably put bags over the tassels to collect the pollen of my plants. The end result will be a variety of blue corn that is adapted, through artificial selection, to this area, and due to an ongoing situation... container cultivation. This is a very old variety of maize grown in the Sierra Madre. Eventually I will be able to grow enough to nixtamalize, grind and make masa into three or four tortillas, but I'm not sure yet how I will manage that many planting containers.

People here in the Southwest have been doing this for a very, very long time, and I keep in mind that people grew, selected, and handed down these plants and seeds, crafting them to their needs from generation to generation as a direct response to the plants. At some point, after sorting out these first several generations of the plants., I will ease up on the record keeping and rely on setting aside healthy or interesting ears for replanting; let it all get mixed together again. You can wake up now...

[piperdbh]

Have you eaten any of the blue corn, and if so, how does it taste?

[Bugbear]

Have you eaten any of the blue corn, and if so, how does it taste?

Yes, I have tasted a kernel here and there. It is a flour corn and can be eaten fresh before it is dry, basically like sweet corn. It has a starchy rather than sweet flavor, kind of like cornmeal. There have been tiny immature ears growing along side the other ears when I harvest them. The kernels on those are too immature to be replanted, so I usually eat those.

I plan on growing these as a late winter, early spring crop, and I will probably start growing one of the very short season flint and flour corn varieties that the Pima have traditionally cultivated in this area for the summer/fall season (white corn). There's a sixty day Tohono O'odham corn I might also try, but I would not need to adapt those to our climate.

I will also be working with traditional sunflowers, devil claws, cotton, wheat, melons, I already have assorted squashes, all on a small scale, and of course I have my wildflower butterfly project and a bunch of trees and stuff.

The blue corn is the special project, though, along with the bonsai.

[piperdbh]

Would it be possible to post some pictures of your horticultural adventures?

[Old Hippie]

When I replant the kernels or seeds from the ears, the code will be used to keep track of the plant that grows from each kernel, and an additional description of the kernel will be amended to the original plant description in my records by adding a link in the HTML file. This is for the second and beyond generations of the plants.

Now that is cool. I've been reading Carol Deppe's book on plant breeding, and her book on "resilient gardening" lately. Hmmm...is what you're talking about a "landrace?" Trying hard to understand the ins and outs of all this...we're trying to save more seeds now and the corn is one of our toughest challenges.

[Bugbear]

Now that is cool. I've been reading Carol Deppe's book on plant breeding, and her book on "resilient gardening" lately. Hmmm...is what you're talking about a "landrace?" Trying hard to understand the ins and outs of all this...we're trying to save more seeds now and the corn is one of our toughest challenges.

Not exactly, Old Hippie. I think a landrace develops more on it's own or from being left to adapt on it's own. You speed up the process a whole bunch through selection. Maize is very much domesticated, too.
It's discussing bacteria rather than plants, but I got some of the ideas from, Experimental Evolution: Concepts, Methods, and Applications of Selection Experiments, by Michael R. Rose, Ed. Theodore Garland, Jr. (Berkeley: U of California P, 2009).
I also have a bunch of horticulture text books. It's way too much to list. Plus my project kind of extends over into cultural realms.

***
If I can get a picture of one of the ears of corn, I will think about posting it piperdbh. I did have a bunch of pictures at one time along with a photo essay on cacti and canvas kilts posted, but they had me in them wearing kilts... And I was wearing t-shirts and sandals in some of them too...

[Ozark Ridge Rider]

I got a few kernals of blue (almost black) at the Grand Canyon one year. It proved very drought resistant, and made almost black cornbread.

Bloody Butcher variety also made black cornbread, even though the meal was pink.