If you want to grow something different, try miniature popcorn, the red-headed glamour girl of Zea Mays everta.
It pops, it’s decorative and easy to grow. However, it doesn’t grow nearly as high as an elephant’s eye, so you may plant it in next year’s small garden or even in a bed or border.
Growing Our Strawberry Popcorn
Our strawberry popcorn grew only 3’ feet tall at maturity. In mid-May, we had planted the fascinating seeds (available at Vaughan’s) in a small row on the wash side of a postage stamp vegetable garden.
My children began saying, “My mother has some little red seeds, and she’s going to plant them, and they’ll grow up to be real popcorn!”
There was much talk when tassel and silk appeared, and we all looked up answers in agriculture text hooks.
There, I even discovered an answer to the often asked, “What makes corn pop?” It was that “the ability to pop is due to the explosion of moisture upon the application of heat.”
Scientific Values Of Growing
But, aside from the scientific values of growing seven small stalks of corn, they’re aesthetic.
They do indeed look like strawberries – glistening mahogany ones on the straw-colored half-shuck.
The tiny ears are about 2” inches long and 1 ½” inches wide. And the tassels! As the corn began to mature in late August, the tassels turned a rich golden brown.
Compatible And Effective In Arrangements
They were compatible in texture and effective in arrangements with scarlet zinnias, tangerine, and tawny zinnias, with lemon-yellow marigolds.
Just now, the seven tassels are placed in a needle holder slightly off-center in a copper tray and are surrounded by the entire harvest—sixteen ears.
The shucks, which have dried to a delightful pale straw color, add a leaf-like grace to the simple harvest harmony which decorates a living-room table and intrigues virtually every person who comes into our house.
Home-Grown Popcorn
My little one was under the impression that you could simply put the whole ear in the popper with home-grown popcorn—an impression, no doubt, from some of the fanciful stories we read about corn popping in the fields.
And next May? Well, I can hear the children saying again, “My mother has some little red seeds, and we’re going to grow real popcorn that looks like strawberries.”
44659 by Hazel Ward Adcock