You Can Grow Your Own Corn—and There’s Way More Than Sweet Corn

The crop requires planning and work, but the sweet rewards are well worth it

There are thousands of varieties of corn, with as many as 300 belonging to the Western Hemisphere.Pitagoras Abreu/Shutterstock

It’s just a specialized kind of grass.

That horticultural description applies to almost all grains, but corn is the only one that home gardeners revere, the only one grown for fresh use—in fact, the only grain commonly found in home gardens period.

Does the average American homeowner grow rice or wheat? No. But corn is a ubiquitous icon of summer picnics and autumn harvest baskets. It’s the only common grain of Western Hemisphere heritage, having been domesticated millennia ago in Central America. Corn is the basis of traditional American foods such as cornbread, grits, and tortillas. It’s grown in all 50 states—yes, even Alaska, by very aspirational gardeners—and is the foundation of Mexican cuisine, which was awarded World Heritage status in 2010 largely on the basis of its 6,000-year-old corn tradition.

Sweet corn is the queen of the summer barbecue—deservedly so—but flour corn brings summer warmth to the winter kitchen when you set a hot skillet of fresh cornbread on the table. severija/Shutterstock

Zea mays, the modern descendant of corn’s grassy ancestor, teosinte, is now represented by a half dozen broad types—sweet corn, flint corn, dent corn, field corn, popcorn, decorative corn—and innumerable varieties. “Since maize hybridizes so readily, it has more varieties than any other crop species,” explains food historian Betty Fussell in her splendid book “The Story of Corn.”

“There are thousands of varieties of corn, so many that taxonomists group these loosely into 300 races for the Western Hemisphere alone.”

But most gardeners think only of sweet corn. As did I, until I experimented with other types, to my delight. Now I grow sweet corn, flour corn, and a dent corn that is also quite decorative.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of seed varieties are readily available from numerous purveyors.Master1305/Shutterstock

It’s Not Just Sweet Corn

Sweet corn is the queen of the summer barbecue—deservedly so—but flour corn brings summer warmth to the winter kitchen when you set a hot skillet of fresh cornbread on the table. Dent and flint corns are easy to grow, harvest, and grind into grits or polenta; same for flour corns.

Ah, but how much room do you need? Less than you think: A flour corn patch that’s 5 by 10 feet is ample for an entire winter of cornbread. Same for flint and dent types and, as for sweet corn, it depends on your summer picnic schedule. Horticultural requirements for all types are basically the same.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of seed varieties are readily available from numerous purveyors. Avid growers can save their own seeds and develop “land races” precisely adapted to their yards or farms, except for the modern hybrid ultra-sweet kinds such as Golden Bantam and Peaches and Cream.

Fuel your backyard summer barbecues with backyard-grown sweet corn.Halfpoint/Shutterstock

Season Length Is the Key

Corn has come a long way since its beginnings in the damp, warm tropics of Central America. If they can grow it in Alaska (in good summers), then what’s the issue?

As with most vegetables, the issue is days to maturity and requisite heat accumulation, the horticultural term for chronological warmth. That is, 100 days of 70 degrees may match 80 days of 80 degrees. The key word there is “may,” and you won’t know about any particular variety until you try it.

Be aspirational—not delusional. My childhood memories of footlong golden ears as thick as boots represent Midwestern varieties such as Iochief that I simply cannot grow at my near-ocean island farm. I’ve settled on a West Coast variety of white sweet corn (Tuxana) that yields marvelously in September and October, has great taste, is exceptionally robust (the plants are eight feet tall!), and is generally unfussy.

Grow your own decor with colorful flint corn.Alena Haurylik/Shutterstock

By comparison, if you are gardening in the deserts of Texas and Arizona, short-season, low-heat varieties may succeed only in spring or autumn, if at all. Look for kinds with 100-plus days-to-maturity ratings, and plant as early as possible.

All this variety advice applies to growing other types of corn, such as flour. The corn I grow to make breakfast cereal is Painted Mountain, developed by a horticultural genius in Montana for cool-climate gardens. My cornmeal corn is an heirloom from Northern Arizona’s Hopi Nation that may be 1,100 years old; I baby it with lots of water in the very warmest spot in my garden, and I believe I get good results because while the Hopi Nation is in Arizona, its high elevation means its corn is adapted to cool nights and springs.

Heirloom corn from the author's 2022 harvest. Eric Lucas

Can you start indoors and set out transplants? In my experience, the effective gain is just a few days. Corn doesn’t readily transplant and requires the utmost tender loving care when you do.

Days to maturity: There’s really no way around it, no matter what type of corn you are growing.

Water, Water Everywhere

Can you water corn too much? If your soil is poorly drained and you’re out there every day dousing it, I suppose. Otherwise, keep it soaked. The usual horticultural advice is that a garden needs an inch of water a week; I give my corn more than that, about 4 days between watering. Make sure you have thoroughly soaked the entire patch, as corn sends roots far, wide, and deep looking for moisture and nutrition.

This leads to ground prep requirements. The soil cannot be too rich; I have grown corn in pure horse-stall muck (which includes wood shavings) and the plants are happy as clams. Dump manure, compost, and mulch on the bed and work it in. Mulch again after the plants are about a foot high. Aside from that, I don’t fertilize.

After hand shelling corn grains with a butter knife, they can be ground into flour with a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder.koi88/Shutterstock

Harvesting, Husking, Grinding, Cooking

When is sweet corn ready? I find all the advice about tassel inspection bogus. There’s no sure way aside from peeling down the husk and having a look. Does that open the ear to insects? I suppose, but I eat my corn before the earwigs can demolish it, anyhow.

Cooking sweet corn is an arduous topic that engenders ferocious debate. Two minutes? Twenty? Since it is quite edible raw, any answer works. Steam it, boil it, roast it, microwave it? Guests at our farm like it best toasted over wood coals while I am cooking a tritip roast.

Flour, dent, and other corn ears should be left on the plant as long as possible; fall rains will not cause trouble until they are cold and persistent. Many ears may droop down, but corn isn’t ready until the husk turns papery. However, you can also bring it in early and carefully dry it in a warm room. Check often for mildew. Do not put it in plastic. Husk it right away or not, your choice, but when it’s fully dry, it’s best to store it for winter unhusked. You can do all this with stray leftover sweet corn, too.

I “shell” the corn grain using a butter knife to pry a row at a time into a bowl. How to grind it? Stone-ground is traditional, but I use a hand-size coffee grinder. Works great, with far less effort. I grind the corn just before use, such as for morning cereal.

Betty Fussell calls maize “The floor, earth, grass, leaves, the bluebird on top of the stalk, the evening and morning star, the man who tends it with his blood and the woman who grinds it with her sweat into meal.” I call my success with this ancient treasure a homegrown miracle that takes years to learn, but just minutes to enjoy.

Owl Feather Farm Red Corn Morning Grits

This morning cereal is hugely popular with my farm guests, who have largely grown up believing grits are a poor backwoods substitute for Cocoa Puffs. Aside from the fact it isn’t instant (no good food is!) it’s pretty easy. It can of course be made from blue, white, or yellow corn also.

• 1 cup red dent corn, fresh-ground but not too fine
• 1/4 cup coconut flakes and pecans, similarly ground
• 1 cup hot water
• 1/4 cup cream
• 1 tablespoon dried cherries
• 1 teaspoon salt

After you have ground the corn—making sure to leave larger granules that provide texture—and the coconut-pecan mixture, add in the water, cherries, cream, and salt; stir thoroughly; and set over very low heat for 45 minutes. Stir regularly to prevent sticking.

Then turn up the heat to medium, adding more water as needed to achieve a thick but not solid texture, continuing to stir often. When done, serve with a pat of butter on top.

5 ‘Corny’ Facts

• “Corn” is actually an old Anglo-Germanic word that covers edible grain of all sorts; thus the prevalence of the term “maize” in much of the world for what we call corn. “Barley-corn” refers to the particular grain used in making beer.
• Why does “corny” mean frivolously old-fashioned and silly? Etymologists guess it has to do with urban perceptions of rural culture and date the term to 1932 where it first appeared in Tin Pan Alley songs.
• Johnny Appleseed supposedly ate corn meal mush every day of his life, breakfast and supper, and often declined invitations to join pioneer families for a (slightly) more elaborate indoor supper.
• Like other Western Hemisphere foods such as potatoes, tomatoes, squash, beans, and chiles, maize was carried around the world rapidly in the 16th century during what historians call the “Columbian exchange.” It’s credited with averting famine in China back in the 1700s, and some anthropologists believe it fueled the demographic explosion that led to today’s population of 1 billion.
• Global corn production in 2022 was nearly 1.2 million metric tons—almost as much as wheat and rice combined—making it the top grain by far. Bear in mind, though, that much of that corn goes to livestock feed and sweetener production, not direct human consumption.