The best thing about getting kids involved in gardening is the enthusiasm they bring. Any activity can become a game or a song, if allowed the full childlike-capability and creativity. The key is often to guides child’s energy and attention to details in a way that inspires them to tell their own story.
Winnie the Pooh is one such timeless character who has captures that imaginative play with a wonderfully educational ability to inform and give even the youngest listeners of stories a framework of story-telling to springboard from into their own land of hundred-acre-play.
Winnie the Pooh wanders in a pastoral landscape, observing a bird flying near an open – branched tree. -Excerpt from “Pooh Goes Visiting and Pooh and Piglet Nearly Catch a Woozle” By A.A. Milne, illustrated by ERNEST SHEPARD
When I first started researching popcorn growing I ran into a few dead ends. My searches for “how to grow popcorn” and “backyard popcorn garden” were not exactly clear. I was trying to see if it was possible to pop regular sweet corn… or how to dry corn to make kernel for popping…? I know my kids and I LOVE eating popcorn, but didn’t really know where to start to add it into my garden.
Ornamental Corn is Popcorn
Glass Gem Corn is one of the most recently popular varieties with historic origins. (Photo: ThomasLENNE/Shutterstock)
It turns out all you need is ORNAMENTAL CORN to make popcorn! How awesome is that? So once I learned that fact, it was off to the races! Learning about types of native corn, or traditional maize was actually much simpler to navigate once I had the keyword of “ornamental corn”.
The next thing to do was choose a variety of popcorn! Or… I mean ornamental corn. Since the Cleveland Indians baseball team recently changed their name to the Guardians, I won’t even mention the name of this corn I grew up hearing in Ohio. But literally the indigenous people who lived here used this exact corn! I love that.
Historic Roots, Today’s World
For me, gardening with native plants is a way to “be patriotic” without being presumptuous. Read more about that soon, on my blog post about natives. Some of these heirloom seeds would be extinct or lost for good, without seed savers and people sharing with one another through trade, seed sharing groups, or other generous local gardeners helping a neighbor.
To read more about the importance of seed saving, go read this article about glass gem corn, on treehugger.org this gorgeous popcorn (traditional colored corn) was saved from extinction by someone honoring their own Cherokee roots. Today, it’s still rare, but went viral in 2019 for a photo that was shared of an especially vibrant-colored ear of corn.
So, when I discovered that ornamental corn was actually that, the original pop corn… It gives such an additional bonus of fascinating history. (Not to mention the tastiness that comes from making popcorn!!! )
Comparing Varieties of Popcorn to Grow
Types of Ornamental Corn:
Red Strawberry 🍓
Glass Gem 💎
Blue Maize 🪁
Standard White Popcorn 🍿
Standard Yellow Popcorn 🌮
These were the main ones I found. If you know another one, if you’ve tried it or had success growing it, let me know in a comment!! I love learning and would love to hear from you!
What does Glads Gem look like? Here is a cute example with photos.
🚫 Don’t Plant POP-corn and regular” Corn 🌽
Since both of these plants are so similar, but also pollinated by wind, the two types of corn (ornamental and any kind of sweet corn) should never be planted closer than 100 feet away from each other. This would cause cross-pollination, rendering both useless for each of their purposes. ***I repeat: DO NOT plant both POPcorn and REGULAR corn. ***
Here is a link explaining the above.
So, How do I grow a small patch of backyard popcorn?
This is my latest experiment. So, I’m relying on other growing tips I’ve found on this one. You can plant in HILLS, rather than rows! So if you’re like me, I’m planting corn in a smaller urban backyard… (read here: hobby gardener, rather than pro.) if you plant smaller hills containing 6-8 kernels in a circular pattern, they can grow all together and self pollinate.
Have you ever wondered if the old adage is true? If there are really a specific number of weeks from the first cricket song counting down to the first frosty morning of autumn?
