Strawberry Disappointment

The first ears of Strawberry popcorn in my garden are drying out.  They look really exciting!  The ears are small, but they are suppose to be.  They have a nice rich red color.

The kernels are also small, even though this close-up makes them look big.  The parts that were in the cob are white, and the outside parts are the red color.  Getting them off the cob was quite fiddly and tedious work.  The reason may be because they were still a little bit moist.  Even though the seeds were hard enough not to be damaged as they were removed, they were still a little stuck.

I put about 50g into my hot air popper.  They whirled around, made lots of noise — smelled fantastic!  The smell was like hot buttered sweet corn!

But this is what came out!  You can see they only popped a little bit, if at all.  The next time I try, I will let them dry out a little more, but I wonder if that was really the problem.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The taste by the way, even half popped, was fantastic.  No real need for extra butter or salt, the taste was rich enough all by itself.