"Winter corn"? (Long shot!)

[thistlechaser]

One of the things I love about RPing is when I learn new things through it. I get to research things I usually would have no reason to! Thistle is a farmer now, and ICly the farm he works on just finished harvesting carrots, so I needed a new crop for them to plant. "Winter corn" seemed the logical thing, so I went with that.

Then I visited google to learn all I could about it...

Apparently there's no such thing as "winter corn". I swear I've heard the term used all my life, but google tells me corn doesn't grow in the winter in this part of the world (it can't handle frost at all). So where did I pick up the term "winter corn"?

Pre-googling I had thought that winter corn was a type of corn more used for animal feed than for people, if that helps.

Has anyone else heard of it? I wonder if I picked it up in some fiction book and it stuck in my head as real...

(This isn't an issue for the RP; since it's a fictional land, corn growing in winter can exist just fine. It's just odd because I thought "winter corn" was as much of a real thing as dogs and schools and such. It's strange as heck to find out there's really no such thing. HOW DID IT GET INTO MY BRAIN?!)

Comments

[tersa.livejournal.com]

Maybe you're thinking winter wheat?

And, if you really want to stretch it, outside the U.S., wheat (or other types of grain) may be called 'corn', which was a catch-all term for grain seeds.

It's only in the U.S. where corn = maize.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Maybe my brain cross-wired winter wheat with corn...

[jakflak.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of winter corn (growing up on a farm in the Palouse country) but winter wheat is usually planted in late fall (so it goes dormant) or early spring so they can harvest early and get the higher pre-harvest price and possibly get in a 2nd planting before fall. You could theoretically do the same thing with corn, but I've never heard of it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. And hello again! It's good to hear from you. I've missed seeing your posts. :) Hope everything is still going well with you and your family!

[evilgrayson.livejournal.com]

Yup. The waist-high green stuff that turns golden in summer is corn. The taller-than-a-man stuff that produces pods is maize.

Winter wheat sounds better, but here the stuff would probably be winter corn.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hm. Maybe that's where I picked it up from...

Thanks!

[jakflak.livejournal.com]

Hi again! I still lurk on LJ but I've mainly moved over to Facebook.

[felknight.livejournal.com]

I was just browsing and saw this. >_> In places like Florida, the growing season is pretty much all year, because there is no winter worth speaking of and barely any frost, let alone snow (which we haven't seen since the 70s). Corn, maize, grows here just fine during the winter.

http://florida-agriculture.com/consumers/crops/inseason/

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oooh, thank you! And for the link! That's perfect, lots of ideas from it!