Tag: texas gourdseed

Cherokee Gourdseed Corn

If you know me, it doesn’t surprise you that I tried a new, unusual crop this past year: Cherokee Gourdseed Corn.

Cherokee Gourdseed Corn

Cherokee Gourdseed Corn

This is a traditional southern corn, as it is a longer season corn.  In other words, I am not sure the summer would be long enough to grow this very much further north than we are.  The books say about 125 days to maturity, and I believe it.  It took longer to mature than any corn I grew this year by a considerable amount.

It was a pleasant corn to look at though – the cobbs were nice and fat on the stalks, and they seemed quite hearty.  The stalks were stout, with no danger of blowing over.

The kernels are amazing though.  As you can see in the picture above, they don’t look crowded on the cobb, but that is because they are so thin and long.  They are often said to remind people of old man teeth or horse teeth.  Did I just say that old man teeth and horse teeth look similar‽  😀  No insult meant to all the old men reading this.  I didn’t really think of the kernels looking like teeth when I was shelling the cobbs, but now that I look at the picture, they are very similar in features to teeth, aren’t they?

The most interesting thing about this corn was not the kernels though, in my opinion.  Instead, it was the ease of shelling.  It was almost as simple as placing two hands on the cobb and twisting.  In fact, I wish I had videod to show, as it was so amazing.

There aren’t very many gourdseed corns out there: only three or four.  This is the Cherokee Gourdseed, and there is a Texas Gourdseed, a Carolina Gourdseed, and I have found some references to a Virginia Gourdseed.  I have my seed stock from this Cherokee Gourdseed that I plan on landracing with at least the Texas Gourdseed, of which I also have some seed.  I will probably hand pollinate some of each as well to keep the pure strains alive.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Like most of the country, we have been in the middle of a bitter cold spell the last week or so, which has resulted in not much happening around the homestead other than protecting the chickens.  More on that tomorrow.  Even so, I have been blessed with another surprise shipment of seeds this week, which gave me a bit of a mystery to solve.

On Thursday I received a package containing numerous bags of corn.  The name on the package wasn’t entirely familiar to me, though the last name caught my attention.  The corn included one I was very interested in, Texas Gourdseed, which happened to be one I have been trying to find.  It also included Drought Hickory King, Kaanga Pango (a New Zealand corn), Cascade Maple Gold, and Cherokee White Flour Corn.  After further research, each of these were corns that could be used as flour corns, which is something else I had been looking for.

I headed off to a gardening forum that I frequent, and I felt confident after a few minutes of research that I found my benefactor, a very nice lady in California who knew I was looking for the Texas Gourdseed Corn, but there was still a mystery to this: how did she get my name and address?  I sent her a message, thanking her for the corn, and asking how she knew my contact info, to which she replied that I had given her that some time back when I was searching for flour corn, and she had been unable to send it then.  So, the mystery was solved, and now I have a ton of new corn to plant this year!  Woot!

The Texas Gourdseed is one that particularly interests me, and I actually already have a post written on why that is.  I will make a few edits to that this week and get it posted soon.

The Kaanga Pango also caught my eye some, as I had never heard of this corn.  I am having trouble finding a lot about it out there, but it seems to have come from the Wellington (New Zealand) Seed Library.  It certainly looks to be a flour-type corn, and from what I can find on the Internet, the Maori, the indigenous New Zealand people, “historically used corn to making a fermented corn, they ate corn fresh, they make something that looks like a tamale, and they ate a pudding/mush from corn.”  That doesn’t tell me for sure they used this corn this way, but it is probable.  Again, it seems flour-like to me, so it will go in my flour landrace this year.  Here’s a picture of the Kaana Pango Corn:

Kaanga Pango Corn

Kaanga Pango Corn

On another note, the popcorn trials are complete for the year, the results of which I am going to share in a post of it’s own.  Despite some challenges in the testing of popping ability, I finally got through all my samples and have a great selection of popcorn to grow for the new year.  More to come on that.

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