Our 2022 garden seed order placed: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds

Last year, we grew the Montana Morado corn, from Baker Creek, which I thought was maize morado, or Kulli, from Peru. They turned out to be a US hybrid.

There was certainly nothing to object to about the corn itself, but once I learned about maize morado, I just got it in me that I really, really want to grow Kulli corn, here in the middle of Canada.

After much searching, I found a source that I could order from: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds.

This image belongs to Mary’s Heirloom seeds.

While the company is based in Texas, the corn itself is from the Andes Highlands. From what I’ve been able to find out, the Highlands have two seasons; summer (dry) and winter (wet). The temperature swings are more moderate than what we have. It’s a mountainous region, filled with microclimates, so it’s hard to know how to compare to the zone system we use in Canada and the US. With how hot and dry our summers can get, it may actually do all right here. It requires 120 days to maturity, so I will be starting them indoors, as we did with the Montana Morado.

The seed packets have only 25 seeds in them, so I ordered four, since I wasn’t ordering anything else. Even so, the cost of shipping wasn’t much less than the cost of the seeds!

As with so many other things, the main issue will be protecting the corn from critters. If we can manage that, I feel we will be able to grow this successfully, here. This is a corn that can be eaten fresh while young as a sweet corn, dried for a flour corn, used as a dye, and of course, used to make chicha morado.

I like a multi-purpose plant!

The Re-Farmer

5 thoughts on “Our 2022 garden seed order placed: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds”

Blue corn tortilla chips are the best, when they’re done right. Problem is the only company I’ve found that does decent ones is Herdez.

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Re-Farmer

December 1, 2021 at 4:02 pm

That’s a company I’ve never heard of – likely, they are not in Canada. The only blue corn tortilla chips I’ve ever had was from Old Dutch, so I’ve got nothing to compare.

That’s another thing about growing and processing our own food. We can try things that aren’t available in stores, if we want! And if we have the energy. Or the equipment. The equipment is, at least, on the list. Not much we can do about the energy… LOL

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