Growing Japonica Striped Flint Corn, and Making Corn Meal to Dry Can

The final stage of my Japonica Striped Flint Corn. Today I canned the corn meal I ground, from the flint corn I grew (for the first time, this summer) and then dried this fall.

It was a funny story, I didn't read thoroughly and thought this corn would be edible. It was plated and growing in the yard when a friend of mine said it was ornamental, and therefore inedible, so I did a bunch of digging and saw that flint corn can be used for cornmeal, and was super excited to not have wasted the space.

Here are the beautiful leaves that grow on this corn. They were just stunning. Also the silks are a deep purple. I used some silk in my hot sauce for brightness.

And here are the deep red corn cobs and some of that purple coming through in the dried leaves. They are so beautiful!

I got the seeds from Baker Creek, and while more than half of what I ordered from them this year failed miserably, this corn did ok. It struggled for a long while but eventually it kicked into gear. I got one pound of cornmeal from the yield on maybe thirty plants in a 4 x 4 raised bed. I will give Baker one more try.

I will try and plant this corn again from some of my dried kernels in the spring.

Mostly I wanted to see if I could give this accidental corn a use and gave mealing a try. I am so glad to have saved the corn, and completed this preservation experiment. I will also be using some of the smaller dried cobs for my Homestead Christmas baskets. Dry canning is not generally recommended but I wanted to give it a try anyway as part of my experiments.