Hack Job - Cobble Hill Courier

Sadly the front page of the Cobble Hill Courier has a report on the corn that is completely false. The reporter Gary Busio has written: "In a startling mea culpa, Christina Kelly revealed that she intentionally planted common corn at the corner of Smith and Bergen streets instead of the rare Lenape blue flour corn she planted at a sister garden in Canarsie."

I'm not sure why he has written this. The information about the corn I planted in Boerum Hill is posted on my website and in the garden itself. It has been available to the public since the beginning of the project. It is certainly not a common corn.

It is the beautiful Iroquois heirloom variety called Gigi Hill blue flint corn.

I actually received a small packet of this corn last year from a botanist in Connecticut whom I contacted while researching the kind of corn the Native Americans would have been growing here at the time of the Dutch arrival. Last summer I grew out the Gigi Hill in a small three sisters garden on the Waterpod -- one of two "test" gardens I did for this project (the other garden was at the Lefferts Historical Homestead in Prospect Park) I collected seeds from the Waterpod garden and have used them in this year's Boerum Hill garden.

Pictures above of the corn seeds and the Waterpod/Gigi Hill three sisters garden from last year.

I hope you will ignore the Courier story and will continue to enjoy the corn!