A Self-Seeded Surprise

Since the majority of the garden where we have the most space to grow edibles has become mostly shady, we needed to find somewhere else to grow things like corn and squash. Our neighbor to the south has a large yard with no trees at all and a few years ago, he graciously allowed us to dig up a rectangular area at the back of his property for us to garden.

Last year, we grew corn over most of it, including beautiful 'Glass Gem', a flint/popcorn variety that took the internet by storm the year before. Though we saved plenty of seed from last year for growing it this year, we didn't plant any.

We did plant three different kinds of sweet corn and we got a decent crop for eating, but that season was over several weeks ago. Last weekend, Romie mentioned that there were several stalks in one corner of the plot that remained green while the rest were drying and straw-colored. He suggested that perhaps these were volunteers from last year's 'Glass Gem', since that matured later than our sweet corn varieties.

Curious, we walked over there and I peeled the husks back on one of the ears and how about that? 

Either these were seeds that we'd planted last year and they hadn't germinated until this spring (not too likely) or there was an ear that got left on the ground last year long enough that it dried sufficiently to have some kernels pop off the ear onto the ground. That doesn't seem too likely either, since we saved all available seed at the end of the season and I don't think we missed harvesting any ears.

However it happened, we're going to have eight or so ears of 'Glass Gem' this year! What a happy surprise. :-)