Sermon 59 - Corn
John 13:34-35
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
1 Corinthians 12:21,22
The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don’t need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
When I was teaching the Sunday school class to garden, a lot of them wanted to plant corn. This is unsurprising. An awful lot of people prefer prefer corn to pretty much any other vegetable. Corn is sweet and tasty, and it's not bad in the nutritional department, either.
Among the First People's of North America who practiced agriculture, there was frequently the cultivation of "the three sisters." I have heard at least two versions of what the three sisters were. In the one case, the three sisters were corn, tomatoes, and squash. In another version, the three sisters were corn, tomatoes, and beans.
I'm not a real huge fan of squash, so I prefer the version of corn, tomatoes, and beans. That version also fits better in trying to explain the benefits of the three sisters.
A version of the three sisters has now come to be known as intercropping. This is the growing of multiple species of plants, each of which supports the growing of the other crops. In the case of corn, tomatoes, and squash, corn provides stalks, which tomato plants can either twine around, or be tied to, in order for the tomato plants to grow tall, and access more sunlight. Some varieties of squash are twining plants, and so, as long as the squash gourds are not too heavy, the squash could be used to tie the tomato plants to the corn stalks.
But, as I say, I prefer the corn, tomatoes, and beans variety. Corn still acts as a stalk for the other vegetables. Most varieties of beans are twining plants, and so can be used to tie or twine the tomato plants to the corn stalks. But there are a couple of other benefits to having beans as a part of the three sisters.
First of all, there is succotash. There are many recipes for succotash, but, basically, at the heart of all of them, is a mixture of beans and corn. Interestingly, eating beans and corn in combination seems to perform some kind of digestive alchemy, and seems to provide more nutritional value then simply eating the two vegetables separately. So, growing corn and beans together would naturally lead to *eating* corn and beans together, which would provide a dietary and nutritional benefit.
There is an additional benefit. Corn takes a lot of nutrients out of the soil. In particular, it takes up a lot of the nitrogen compounds in the soil, and thus, over time, will deplete the nitrogen content of the soil. This has a negative effect on the ability of plants to produce proteins, either for their own use and growth, or in terms of the nutritional value of the food they produce. As I say, corn depletes nitrogen from the soil. Corn has a rather high protein content, and is very nutritious, and it may be this requirement to produce proteins that is the reason that corn leeches so much nitrogen out of the soil. Beans also provide a great deal of nutrition in the way of protein. However, beans have another trick up their sleeve. Beans get along very well with various forms of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. Beans do not delete nitrogen from the soil. As a matter of fact, beans actually improve the soil, and it's nitrogen content. Therefore while the corn provides stalks for the beans to twine around and grow up on, the beans provide nitrogen in the soil for the corn to use. Beans are a good way to revitalize most areas of soil, even if the soil nutrients have been depleted over the years. I have, elsewhere , talked about the providence of broad beans. Broad beans can, in fact, be grown over the winter, as long as there is not too much freezing cold weather. You might not get a terrific crop out of winter grown broad beans, but growing broad beans in depleted soil will help to revitalize the soil, even over the winter.
So here's our first lesson for today. We need to cooperate. We need to work together. We were made to support each other. We contribute different things, but we are all part of one farm. We can't say "we are corn, so we are taller, and therefore better than the rest of you." We may grow tall, and have nutritious seeds, but if we don't have the lowly beans with us, we are, eventually, going to create a wasteland.
So it may surprise you to learn that I am not going to say that corn is one of God's gifts to man, and proves God's providence for us. Actually, God did not create corn. Man did. The indigenous people of the southwestern United States, and much of Mexico, took a grain called teosinte, and, over many generations of breeding, developed something that we would recognize, even today, as corn.
There are, now, probably hundreds of varieties of corn. Most of those varieties would be known as maize, or feed corn. A lot of this corn is either fed to animals, or is ground into some kind of meal, and you most likely encounter it, if at all, as toasted corn. One other variety of this type of corn that you might encounter regularly is, in fact, popcorn. Yes, popcorn is actually a variety of corn. Sometimes you can actually buy it on the cob, and, if you are really careful, you can actually get it to pop on the cob. The kind of corn that you would recognize as corn on the cob, or kernel corn, or creamed corn, is a small subset of varieties known as sweet corn. These, as the name implies, have a higher sugar content, and are harvested earlier than feed corn stalks, before they have had a chance to dry out.
Having noted that God didn't create corn, I should also note that God seems to be better at this than we are. For one thing, God created things like broad beans that fortify the soil, rather than deplete it. Also, corn, by itself, has to be prepared properly in order to be nutritious. If you don't do it properly, you risk getting pelagra. You can eat broad beans any way you like.
You may be surprised that I say that corn was developed in the Americas, and was completely unknown in Europe until the voyages of exploration across the Atlantic Ocean. Those of you who are better versed in reading your Bibles may remember that there is mention of corn in the Bible. Yes, it is true, that word is used, but it doesn't refer to what we now know as corn. It is another type of grain; probably barley.
But back to the Sunday school class. As noted, a lot of the kids wanted to plant corn. Corn will grow, here, but, since it was developed in a much warmer and sunnier climate, not all varieties of it will grow here, and even the ones that do grow here have a harder time of it. Growing corn here, in this climate, is always a bit chancy. You have to start the corn pretty early, and there's always the chance that, if you do so, there's going to be a bit of a frost just as the first shoots start to come out of the ground. You probably have to start the corn as sprouts, and then transplant them, and then transplant them, once again, once you're pretty sure that there is no chance of frost from that point on. And you have to hope that it's going to be a particularly hot and sunny summer, in order to get the corn to grow.
But I didn't go into all of this with the Sunday school class. What I *did* tell them was that, when you are planting corn, you go grow the corn quite differently from a number of the other crops that you plant. If you are planting carrots, or radishes, or beans, or lettuce you are planting rows of the crop that you are planting. You can make the rows as long as you want. You can plant a row of radishes, and then a row of carrots, and then a row of lettuce, and then a row of beans, and then a row of whatever you want. That's generally how people do gardens. It makes it easier to know what, and where, things are growing.
But you can't do that with corn. At least not if you are hoping to get a crop. When you are planting carrots, what you hope to eat is the root. When you are planting lettuce, what you hope to eat are the leaves. When you are planting corn, what you hope to eat are the seeds. So, in order to get any seeds at all, the seeds have to be fertilized. And, generally speaking, they have to be fertilized by other corn plants.
So you don't plant corn in rows. You plant corn in blocks. You plant corn so that all the corn plants are clustered together. That way, the different corn plants will fertilize each other, and then you'll get corn. Edible corn.
You can grow corn plants by themselves. As a matter of fact, corn makes a very nice office plant. If you have a south-facing window, and lots of sunshine coming through it, corn plants will grow quite happily, and you will have a nice leafy plant, that actually does a fairly good job of keeping the air clean and reasonably well humidified. It's a lovely plant, and it'll grow quite well, and, since you don't get frost in your office, you can start it early and have it grow for quite a long time. You'll have a nice plant in your office.
What you won't have, is corn. Unless you take great care to harvest the pollen, and fertilize the seed casings as they start to develop, the seeds won't get fertilized, and so they will never develop cobs of corn. Nice office plant, yes: corn, no.
Which makes for a lovely Sunday school illustration. Yes, you can grow a corn plant all by itself. It's just not going to produce anything. If you want it to produce anything, you have to put it together with other corn plants. So here is an illustration of why we should be going to church on Sunday. Here is an illustration of why the Bible says it is so important that we have fellowship with each other. The first and greatest commandment is that we should love God. But the second commandment is that we should love our neighbors. Our fellow Christians. We have to grow together. If we try to grow, all on our own, just loving God, well, that may be okay. But we are not going to be very productive. We aren't going to grow, fully, as Christians. If we are going to be productive, and if we are going to develop to the fullest extent that God wants us to develop, we have to be together with other Christians. Fellowship isn't just a fun social thing. It's also important for us.
Oh, look. The second lesson is the same as the first ...
Sermon - Garden series
Sermon 2 - Broad Beans
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-2-broad-beans.html
Sermon 3 - Blackberries
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-3-blackberries.html
Sermon 33 - Transplanting
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/sermon-33-transplanting.html
Sermon 57 - Leaven
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/sermon-57-leaven.html
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