Neosinte is my first generations of developing and using teosinte as a grain crop. Similar to corn teosinte combines the drought tolerance of a wild grass with the corn we know today using a heirloom blue corn and the Mexican Highland teosinte. Neosinte was born from this cross done at my farm with help of my daughter. It was a pathless path type of selection process with the goal of creating an outwardly ever expanding diverse population of plants. It is the opposite of a variety or selection with great diversity essentially being impossible to nail down a few characteristics. The goal which I ‘penciled in’ later was to select corn like a grain plant like wheat with small kernels and foliage that is more grass looking than corn is. This was give it greater environmental resilence and drought tolerance.
This year I made corn bread from the kernels. I soon found out that in the process the kernels were incredibly hard exceeding even popcorn. My old Vita-mix grinder heated up from the friction very quickly as if I was grinding pea gravel. The flavor was earthy with corn overtones. I screened the flour to remove the pea gravel kernels which never did grind fully. I followed the old standby Betty Crocker corn bread recipe but substituted teosinte flour and some Ashworth sweet corn flour otherwise a large portion of my seed crop would have been destroyed in the making of the bread. For the last two years, I have been making popcorn from the mix. This works too but less than half actually pop as some are sweet corn in their genetics meaning they have the crinkly seeds. Those will expand upon heating but not pop. They still taste good. In the popping all the kernals expanded in the process. I think the mineral content is different than corn. I am working on having it tested for its nutrition. I currently offer a little of this seed to those who want to further the outward expansion of Neosinte. It is the corn before corn and a means to see the great diversity in the corn genus at its very basis. Relax. Its not competing against the record corn of this year which made it past the 600 bushels per acre mark.
Free shipping on this seed. Neosinte contains 250 seeds plus 3 packets of the following species and crosses. Details are on the link below.
Northern Highland Teosinte-Zea mays var. mexicana
Popcorn Teosinte-hybrid cross with small popcorn type wild corn.
Ancient Corn-the most wild form of corn with clustering cobs, mixed colors.
