Hi Joan. I often plant the same batch of corn for 2 or 3 years. I find
that after 3 years, the germination rate falls off a bit. Even worse,
there are quite a few runts that never produce, among those that do come
up. I store my leftover seed in a cool cellar sealed in a jar with some
silica gel to keep the moisture low.
These results are with the super sweet varieties and standard sweet corn
might do better.
I wondering what your corn seed looks like. Is it slightly shriveled
like a sweet corn or completely shrunken like the super sweets? Is it
plump like a field corn or like pop corn?
If you do plant it, I would suggest planting it indoors in the spring to
give it ideal conditions. If it grows, plant it out and see what you get.

Steve



kessira wrote:

Greetings,

This is going to be a weird question - please bear with me.

I am a librarian working in a special collections library; we get lots
of old volumes with lots of odd things stuck in them (dried flowers,
pictures, etc.) Today, one of my coworkers found several kernels of
corn stuck in the margins of a book called "The gardeners dictionary",
by Philip Miller, published sometime around 1756-1759. Now, we're not
thinking these are 350 year old pieces of corn, but they *could* be.

I've done some searching on corn and planting online, but I can't find
a source that tells me the, well, "shelf-life" of a kernel of corn.
We're intrigued by the idea of planting these and seeing what happens,
but we don't want to go to all the time and bother if these are too
old. If we do end up planting, what would be the best way to prepare
the kernels? Should we soak them in water, or keep them between wet
paper towels, or just put them in some potting soil?

Sorry for all the potentially dumb questions; we have done lots of
gardening, but not with seeds like this!

Thanks,
Joan
Chapel Hill, NC