My Venezuelan corn July 26th.

Some of the corn is doing good, seeing how it has never had rain. I have watered it a little bit several times. Some is shriveling up and dying. This is the worst year to garden since 1956. We have had less than an inch of rain since may.This corn is no till, it is growing in a place where it has been mulched for three seasons with nothing planted. It is pure clay filled with rocks, you can't even dig in it.

Here are my no till Venezuelan Corn plants.

Two years ago this was a steep hillside covered in weeds, and wild onions. I smothered them out with cardboard and have mulched continuously with leaves and straw. The soil was or is rocks and clay, but it finally looked plantable, so I pulled the leaves aside and planted the corn and covered them up again with leaves. I have been watering them a little with manure tea.

Venezuelan Corn-Cachapas. Venezuelan Pancakes

This is some of the corn from this years Venezuelan seed. My theory is that maybe it has a higher protein content than U.S. corn. The flavor is very different with U.S. corn and you can  use field corn to make these pancakes, but they taste horrible. All they are is a little bit of milk and sugar mixed in with the ground kernals. I run the corn through my Cuisinart after the kernals get a little doughy. The cachapas are delicious with Mozarella cheese.Here in Illinois the corn seems to take 100-110 days.

Venezuelan Corn

I was cutting down my corn plants and found another 30 ears of corn. I thought I had it all picked. I'll try to get a picture of the Cachapa pancakes I'm going to make with them.

One of my assistants with the first three ears of corn.

Picking my first three ears of Venezuelan corn.

I am picking my first ear of corn. I am six foot tall. Even standing on a bucket, it was hard for me to reach the ears. I planted it May 1st. So it has taken four months to get it this far. We had enough to make two corn panckes. Vale la pena.

Venezuelan corn 13 feet tall. I'm going to try to make some cachapas soon.

I found out that tropical corn varieties grow very tall and won't set ears until daylight hours are less than 13 hours each day. I think I had my first tassels in mid July, and just now they are getting silks on the plants. It's all very uniform. I have identified the first three ears to pollinate and hope to plant them next year. I'm hoping there is enough genetic variation that I can breed the corn into something more normal over several seasons. Even to pick any ears or check them for development I have to stand on a bucket to reach them. I was going to hybridize them, but couldn't reach the tassels. This corn will make a very delicious pancake that American corn doesn't work for.