One of our favorite snacks is popcorn. Not the stuff in the bag, but from scratch in a pot on the stove. A big bowl drizzled with olive oil and sea salt is one of the best ways to end a full day of homesteading. In our endeavors to eat more self-sufficiently, we knew we needed to start growing popcorn.
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Not just any popcorn though, we wanted the whole rainbow! We started with the “glass gem” variety, but struggled growing popcorn due to the lack of sunlight in our cottage’s backyard. The ears were small, but were a gorgeous array of colors that practically glowed.
Our second year, we moved to a slightly sunnier patch and added some Cherokee long ear corn into the mix. It was growing well until a light-fingered raccoon grabbed a midnight snack. Womp Womp…
Experimentation begins
Last year we finally had a plot available with full sun in a different location. and we decided to plant a whole 25 foot row of just popcorn. Noting our previous small ears, we decided to experiment with cross-pollinating a popcorn variety known for large ears and kernel sizes–Robust–into the mix. That’s when it struck us that we could create our own cottage variety of popcorn that is colorful, pops well, has good ear sizes, and thrives in our climate if we started seed saving!
With that goal in mind, we planted every other hole with Robust and Cherokee Long Ear along with a few remaining kernels of Glass Gem. The plan was to allow the wind and pollinators to intermingle the varieties as much as possible…and it worked! We saved kernels from our favorite ears to plant the next season for growing popcorn.
This year, we had access to an equally sunny location closer to the Cottage and planted our saved popcorn seed. We added to the color mix with the very dark purple/black Dakota variety. Using the same method of every other hole with our various varieties, we planted.
Unfortunately our spring was cool, cloudy, and excessively rainy. The popcorn had a slow start, but we were impressed at how many more ears were the colors we wanted. We will be saving a little seed from the few ears that managed to perform well despite our odd spring weather. Hopefully next year’s popcorn will have even more success now that it has some genetics to thrive in cooler weather too!
How to start creating your own popcorn cultivar:
1. Select two varieties of popcorn
Whether you already have a favorite variety you want to improve upon, or starting from scratch, just make sure you have open-pollinated (non-hybrid) seed and that the days to harvests are similar. Here are some suggested varieties:
- Strawberry
- Glass Gem
- Japanese Hulless
- South American Heirloom
- Robust
- Dakota Black
- Cherokee Long Ear
- Multi-pack of seed corn
2. Interplant to maximize cross-pollination
Unlike in normal seed saving, you actually want cross-pollination to take place. The wind typically pollinates corn, so you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for each stalk to share pollen with its neighbor.
3. Allow to dry on the stalk
Allow the ears of corn to dry on the stalk before harvesting. You want mature, dry kernels for your seed corn.
4. Select your seed corn
Select kernels from your favorite and best ears with the traits you want. For example, we saved any colorful kernels that appeared on the typically all yellow Robust ears knowing that cross pollination was effective
5. Repeat the process
Your second year, plant your seed corn and interplant any third variety you’d like in the genetic mix. Save your seed corn again.
Congratulations! You now have your own personal popcorn variety uniquely adapted to your specific growing conditions. If you want to learn more about saving your own seeds, check out some of our other how-to posts.
