This was one of my most anticipated harvests of the season, my Painted Hills Sweet corn. There is a well known variety of starch corn called Painted Mountain, a genepool mix of a number of different colored heirloom varieties. This was a cross between that variety and Luther Hills Sweet Corn. The seed for this came from Peace Seedlings, the seed company belonging to the daughter of Alan Kapuler, who was the breeder of this variety.
Watching the plants grow was a blast! All different colors; stalks, silk, ears and of course the kernels. It was like a fantasy land crop, almost too colorful to believe it was real. You can see a lot of the colors in the picture above.
With all the excitement came some disappointments too. First I had damping off problems when starting the seeds indoors and lost more than half my seedlings. Okay, damping off problems were probably my fault for not keeping things clean enough, but I did try to keep things clean and didn’t have any damping off problems with any other seeds.
Then when I put them out in the garden, a number of them were too weak to survive. Again, this could be partly my fault, and perhaps I could have let them get bigger before setting them out or maybe I could have waited for the soil to warm up a little more.
Then there was a lot of variability in the remaining plants, and it’s clear the genetics were not completely there for my climate. Really, they didn’t grow well at all. I struggled to get a decent harvest, and it’s mostly what you see in the picture above (starting with 125 seeds). I might get a few more ears in a few weeks time. I had a hard time telling when it was mature enough to harvest, because the ears were small and underdeveloped so I kept thinking I should give it more time.
The taste?
I had high expectations. I had very, very high expectations, and they simply weren’t met. I ate it about an hour after harvest, so it was very fresh, but it was not at all sweet. I understand heirloom sweet corn is not as sweet as commercial varieties, but still this didn’t even have any hint of sweetness. Mostly it was starchy and bland. It was however very edible in it’s own way.
Was I disappointed?
Well, a little. Like I said, I expected so much more. At the same time, wow! Multi-colored sweet corn! Can you believe it? A variation of the famous Painted Mountain corn! Perfectly edible. Truly a visual delight, if not a tasty one. It’s clear it needs some breeding and selection work to make it suitable for my climate and to stabilize it, something I don’t have the space, isolation, expertise or time for right now. If this is an early peek at the future of sweet corn, it’s exciting! It needs some work, but this really has the potential to turn into a very interesting variety!
Will I Grow it Again?
Not anytime soon. I’ve seen it and done it, and will look for something else next year. Trying it was a great experience.
This is good to know about Painted Hills, as I’ve been really curious about it. I grew one of its parents, Luther Hill, this year and LOVED it. Unlike other OP corns, it truly is sweet and very delicious. But it is good for me to know that Painted Hills isn’t sweet, because I really want that trait in my corn. Thanks for sharing your discoveries with us.
Howdy Patrick,
Glad to see you had some success with painted hills. A few suggestions that will help you out but to preface those, give this corn another try, there is much here for you I promise!
Suggestion number one, if it is at all possible to do so and you can get some extra seed of this corn, directly plant it in the ground, the genetics of this corn having come from Luther Hill which has good cool soil emergence and from the mass genepool of painted mountain flint corn which has been selected for cold tolerance and cold soil emergence should give you a stand of plants which will impart those genetics into your seed line, any areas where the seed doesn’t come up you can replant a week or so later and they will still silk and pollinated in unison and impart the cool soil emergence genetics, allow the seed to dry down and in a few years you will have your own strain of this particular goldmine of genetic information type of sweet corn.
Another observation, if you were attempting to eat the corn at the stage shown in the photo the corn was already begining to convert suguars to starch. Nearly all of the color seeded sweet corns are never in color when edible, it’s more a novely of the seed that they dry down as such. When this corn is in the edible stage it should mostly be a bi-color yellow and white corn, as it matures you can catch it as the color just starts to emerge in the pericap usually in shades of blue and purple and pink having just become visible, once it is in the stage it is in in this picture it has converted most of the suguars into starch and the seed is ready to go dormant for the season.
Please give it another go if you can, maybe even put it on your growout list for adapting to your climate which is not particularly hospitable to corn from what I have read, however after a couple of years you will truly have something to be proud of even if the ears are smaller than that of those traditionally grown in the Americas.
If you are interested in a corn which will color up in the milk/green/edible stage that is sweet and which provides high levels of antioxidents in the form of anthocyanin then please check out Kapulers Martian Double Red or Red Miracle or any of the other red lines that he has bred, all of which are purple from the get go and fairly easily adaptable and still a bit genetically unstable which would be good for selecting a corn in your climate.
Hope this helps.
Your Friend,
Alan
Hey, how can one get ahold of the Kapulers Martian Double Red or Red Miracle seed as mentioned about. I would love to have some!
I have to agree the corn should be eaten before the turning of the color for this particular variety–it will be much better!
Thanks for sharing and posting!
Jodi
oops! forgot e-mail addy! sorry
Hi Jodi,
I’ll answer the question here, but also send you an email.
I don’t think Red Miracle is available anymore. It was not a true stable variety, but rather a selection of an F3, I think. In short it was just a one-off creation by Alan Kapuler, without the intention of re-offering it. Rebsie didn’t know what she was doing when she made it famous on her blog! I think the same is true of Martian Double Red, and I think this is just research Alan was doing that he shared with others while it was available.
I do know someone who has a few leftover Red Miracle seeds, and is trying to grow them out with the intention of saving and trying to stabilize them. If that works, maybe something similar will become available soon.
Alan Kapuler’s daughter runs a seed company called Peace Seedlings (formally called Peace Seeds), but I seed the website is down. I think it’s in Corvallis, Oregon, you might try looking up the phone number (I know this is a very old fashioned thing to do!). They are the best ones to contact about Alan’s seeds.
I read your comment section and I grew Painted Corn last year, and have a pic that might help people. See the pic in the website link. It shows Painted Hills in edible stage, very sweet and delicious, and the mature unedible corn together.
Thanks LP! Great picture.
If anyone is having trouble finding it, the link to the picture is http://i46.tinypic.com/2r1zm75.jpg
Great info here, in both the original post and comments! Thanks! I’m growing corn for the first time this year and chose this variety. I direct sowed the seed after soaking them overnight. I planted 76 and ended up with 38 stalks growing. Some didn’t sprouts, and the rest got munched by slugs. The rest are growing great! And even if we just get two ears per stalk, that’s a lot of corn! A few weeks later I interplanted Calabacitas squash and Cube of Butter squash, as well as Trail of Tears pole beans, ala the Three Sisters technique: http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html