Did he tell you if it was a field or dent type corn as opposed to a sweet corn?

The man that grew it is dead and his son didnt know what they called it but white corn. It has been in the McRae family for over a 100 years.

Sounds a lot like the family heirloom corn my wife's family maintained for over 100 years, and then lost.

Look into Hickory King. See what the kernels for Hickory King are like. It's just a hunch, but I suspect that Hickory King and a number of close relatives were quite wide spread down in Georgia.

George

I had some Hickory King.This corns kernal is longer and not as wide as Hickory King .It a shoe peg corn I believe.Some one on the vegetable forum told me about shoe peg corn.

I grow shoepeg corn. It is also known as Country Gentleman. It is a sweet corn and it is delicious. It is my husband's and son's favorite all-time corn ever. The kernels are arranged in an irregular pattern in the ears...not in straight, even rows like most corn.

If what you have is shoepeg corn, it is available through many sources as "Country Gentleman", including Southern Exposure Seed Exchange or Baker Creek Heirloom Seed.

I have about 120 shoepeg corn plants up and growing in my garden right now.

Dawn

My garden is still much too wet to plant corn yet, but I would like some advice regarding nutrient requirements for sweet corn, And also, early and late types.

By the way, thanks for the mention of the Country Gentlemen corn. It's not commonly sold as seed corn in the stores here, but I'll bet it can be found online. Sounds delish!

I read yesterday on www.worldshealthiestfoods.com that blue corn, and the other colored corns are even healthier than the regular yellow corn we eat. I made blue corn pancakes with a touch of whole wheat flour and scattered a few pecans on top for breakfast this morning. Yum! I think I will grow some this summer.

Here is a link that might be useful: WorldsHealthiestFoods

Country Gentleman is available from the companies that special in open-pollinated heirloom varieties including Seed Savers Exchange, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Victory Seeds. (I'm doing this from memory, but pretty sure at least 3 out of the 4 have it.)

Blue corn is open-pollinated and likely available from the same sources as Country Gentleman and also from Seeds of Change. Some of the varieties of blue corn that I can think of off the top of my head are Hopi Blue, Jade Blue, and Black Aztec in the field corn category and Dakota Black or Mini-Blue in the popcorn category.

NATIVE Seed/Search also has a fascinating collection of heirloom corns.

As far as nutrition, corn is a heavy feeeder, so I like to add lots of manure and/or compost to the beds in the fall before planting corn in the spring so it will have all the nitrogen it needs. Corn also needs soil that has a pH of 6.0 to 7.0. You can feed corn with a chemical fertilizer if you don't garden organically, probably one that has a 1-2-1 ratio like 10-20-10, depending on where you are in the state.

Almost any variety you want to grow will do well here if planted at the proper time so it will mature before the temperatures get hot enough to impede pollination.

For Oklahoma, the recommended planting dates are March 25-April 30th, so you are nearing the end of the planting window. I know it is already May, but sometimes you have to plant late to accomodate the weather.

One of my favorite Early Varieties is Early Sunglow, which I think has a DTM of about about 60-64 days. If I plant it the last week in March, I am generally harvesting it on Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. The advantage to growing an early variety is that it matures before the corn earworms and Eurpoean Corn Borers arrive, but the disadvantage is that it produces fairly small ears.

For late corn I tend to grow Silver Queen, Texas Honey June, Country Gentleman or Serendipity. You have to plant your corn early enough that it tassels and silks while daytime highs are roughly below about 90 degrees or you will get poor tip fill.

I plant both my early and late corn at the same time, and so far I've never had both varieties tassel and silk at the same time.

If you've never grown corn below, you need to plant it in blocks to get good tip fill. Corn is wind-pollinated and you won't get good ears if you plant one long row of corn. So, if you were planting 40 corn plants, for example, I'd have 4 rows of 10 plants or 5 rows of 8 plants, but not one long row of 40 plants.

If raccoons roam your neighborhood, you'll have to fight them for every single ripe ear, and they will win 90% of the time unless you have an electric fence.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Website of Native Seed/Search