Indigenous Corn Cultivars

Before heading to your favorite local spot to pick up the useful, but not very inspiring, F1 hybrid sweet corn cultivars, consider making some space for something a little more unexpected in this year’s garden. Believe it or not, what most people commonly group together as “Indian Corn” is actually a wonderfully diverse range of cultivars, and all are edible. We’ve just developed an amnesia of sorts here in the United States. To be completely honest, all corn is, in fact, Indian corn. The simple beauty of corn transformed meals around the globe with the Columbian exchange. Sister corn deserves time in the spotlight for all her contributions to our nourishment:

Biodiversity. Comprising less than 5 percent of the world’s population, Indigenous people protect 80 percent of global biodiversity. With the weather extremes we’re experiencing, many of these old cultivars that our farming ancestors curated for us may hold answers to the climate crisis. Some of these plants have been adapted to need little water, or to have short life cycles. They may very well be the answer to evolving our agriculture to change with the climate.

Our bone dust and blood