Why Grow Corn (Maize) at Home?

Reader Contribution by Pamela Sherman
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Of all major garden crops, corn may be the most versatile, varied, adaptable, and delicious staff of life a gardener could grow.

Starting in Mexico many thousands of years ago, then Peru, the rest of South and Central America, later North America, then from these continents to everywhere else over the past 500 years, home-grown maize has become so precious that local cultures world-wide believe it is their own indigenous crop. As author Michael Blake says, ” humans grow maize and maize grows humans.”

The recipes  from thousands of local cultures in a range of latitudes and climates are staggering. They hail from hundreds of different varieties of corn—whether popcorn, flint, dent, flour, or sweet–and from different parts of the plant (stalk, cobs, kernels, leaves) plucked at different stages of ripeness.

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