Sweet Corn Ripe 323 



Unconsciously one says "Golden Bantam" when sweet corn 

 is mentioned. This goes to prove how a new variety of a 

 widely popular vegetable can capture a whole nation of con- 

 noisseurs. For Americans were up on corn long before W. 

 Atlee Burpee offered the first "Golden Bantam" on the mar- 

 ket. That was in 1902. Then, and for some years to come, 

 Americans thought of yellow corn as "chicken feed." Sweet 

 corn, they thought, should be pearly white. Yellow corn was 

 tough. True, the yellow corn they had known was tough. 

 It was field corn which has a large starch content in the kernels. 

 Sweet corn differs from the dents and flints in its low content 

 of starch and its high sugar content. But the color of the ker- 

 nels has nothing to do with the proportions of what is inside 

 them. 



The variety "Black Mexican," which has some black kernels 

 scattered through the rows, was known long before the crea- 

 tion of Golden Bantam. But Black Mexican was regarded as 

 a novelty, not as a leader. The popular sweet corns were 

 "StowelFs Evergreen;" "Country Gentleman" with its small, 

 translucent kernels which wander crookedly along the cob 

 like a countryman finding his way home from a bibulous mar- 

 ket day; "Metropolitan," an early variety; and "Peep o' Day." 

 The canners called for "Evergreen" and "Country Gentle- 

 man." They too said that people wouldn't eat a yellow corn. 

 They had something to find out. 



During the Civil War years a boy was born in a red brick 

 farmhouse not many miles northwest of Boston. His name 

 was Luther Burbank. Many years later a distinguished Dutch 

 botanist was to say of him that he was "a gardener touched 

 with genius." Luther Burbank was slow to admit to the genius 

 part of the characterization; but he never was in any doubt 

 about the truth of the first half. From the first April when 

 he toddled after his mother as she went about her flower 

 garden, his career was determined. 



Before 1875, young Burbank on his farm near Fitchburg, 

 Massachusetts, was experimenting with growing sweet corn 



