Painted Mountain
Well, its that time of year again, winds screaming, colder than cold, snow up your gizzard and the mailbox starts filling up with seed catologs. Time to sit by the fire, fliping through the pages, dreaming about the smell of fresh tilled earth and the hope that comes every spring at planting time. The Baker Creek catolog came yesterday and I found this interesting flour corn. Painted Mountain Corn is listed as a 75 day corn, perfect for the short Mt Hunger season. Its 13% protein and pretty to look at as well. I’ve been wanting to grow a corn for kitchen corn meal, and this might just fit the bill. Has anyone out there ever grown any of this?
December 18th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Funny you should mention Baker Creek Catalog, we got ours and have been spending some fun hours reading and planning. We also will be planting field corn for the first time this coming summer. We have chosen Hopi Blue corn. It will be interesting to compare
December 19th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Hi Ginny
Yes, we should set something up here for people to record yeilds for different heirloom varities. Everyone could compare yeilds and quality, and use it for a little database for choosing varities.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
How do you get one of these catalogs?
December 19th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Hi Missouri Rev
Heres the catalog request page…
http://rareseeds.com/catalog/
December 25th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Hey Scott,
I’ve grown Painted Mtn for a few years now and it’ll make it here easy. Got it when it was still just a private seed from an ad in the back of Small Farmer’s Journal. It’s very similar to Mandan Bride, (I think that’s the right name).
Another thing to think about, when planting a short day variety like that is you can have a longer day variety right next to it and won’t have any trouble with cross pollination because they pollinate at different times, that is if they’re planted about the same time. That takes away the problem of having different varieties planted far apart to prevent crossing.
Painted Mtn and similar corns have good drought tolerance, (believe me I know), but Golden Bantam sweet corn and Black Aztec corn didn’t even throw a cob because of the dry conditions. There’s a few other corns that couldn’t take drought either, but I forget right off hand what they were.
Tom
December 26th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Hi…
I just wanted to add my experience in our first year of growing heirloom sweet corn. We purchased our seeds from Baker Creek. We grew the Golden Bantam and Double Standard. Our growing conditions this last season, were less than desireable, for most our crops. We had wetter than normal and much cooler conditions. Out of the two…the Double Standard out yeilded the Golden Bantam. But…the Golden Bantam we did get…well…we were just amazed at the beauty of it. Our overall yeilds were mostlikely low due to our cooler/wet conditions…as the soil was rich, and the plant’s themselves were very healthy looking.
I’m very glad Northern Farmers shared about growing a short and long day corn w/o cross pollination, great reminder. I had read that once before…but forgot all about it.
Thank you Scott for bringing this topic up and allowing other’s to share their experience and knowledge for others to learn.
Kris in WA
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
Thanks for the good info Tom. I didn’t know you had planted it over your way. It cracks me up to think that a corn called “Black Aztec ” can’t take drought. By the name you’d assume otherwise
Hi Kris
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us.