Gila River A'al Hu:n

First time ever growing corn of any kind! I grew this corn mid-summer July 28, 2025 in six 65-gallon tan grow bags each with a large 1.7 gallon ollas from Growoya. I planted 2 seeds per hole and all of it germinated. They produced tassels. I hand-pollinated by both shaking the tassels and collecting pollen. Some stalks had more than one ear.

My user errors:
- I crowded too many into each bag
- didn't mulch the top
- didn't top-water enough in the beginning while they were getting established
- I didn't cull doubles early enough
- I didn't feed often enough
- some of the plants weren't strong enough in the beginning to recover from early Armyworm "hole-punches"
- some plants didn't grow very high due to the above

What Worked Against Me:
- using new soil, albeit from the Arizona Worm Farm (Raised Bed Mix)
- a hail storm
- heavy rain during tassel emergence
- Corn Earworms; I did not know how to identify early or treat

Overall:
- The ears weren't very big (probably my fault for above user errors)
- I was able to get enough of a harvest for several large batches of cornbread
- It was delicious

This summer, I currently have a monsoon planting going on right now. I have learned from the errors of last year and adjusted accordingly. This year, I planted KI:KAM HU:N. It's been barely a month since I planted, but already it looks soooo much stronger and healthier than last year's crop, after learning from my errors and making adjustments.

Gila River A'al Hu:n

The kernels germinated well. I only grew 10 plants just to look at them and compare them with other Papago/Pima which I grew more of. They were similar to the others, but were inbred and had some problems:
20% had yellow speckles on the leaves, which is a fairly common genetic defect, not a disease. It inhibits healthy photosynthesis.
20% were male sterile. The tassels did not produce pollen. This is also genetic. You don't want genetic pollination problems in the group, especially with high temperatures when fragile pollen is easily killed.
20% had the orange gene from "chin mark" contamination.

The major purpose for this corn would be to maintain genetic diversity, which has already largely disappeared. But someone would need to remove the defects from this line before using it in a breeding program with other corns.

My main reason for me not wanting to grow more of this is that it comes from the northern river reservation. It's ancestors were irrigated for thousands of years, plus the river reservation receives 3" more rainfall a year than the southern desert reservation. It is taller and slower to mature than I want, because it evolved with more water.

I am developing a line of drought resistant corn. NS/S line Smoik Huun is from the southern desert reservation near the Mexican border. It was raised without irrigation and also with less rainfall. That is a gold mine of genetics! That will be the foundation of my work.

A big thanks to NS/S for saving valuable genetics. I have combined some NS/S desert lines with North Plains Indian Corns in creating my drought hardy lines of corn in Montana. You might have heard of me for creating Painted Mountain Corn and others, that are feeding people on every continent in the world.

Climate heating is predicted to turn 75% of the world into desert, and CHAT says that the last grains to survive will be SW desert corns. NS/S will be the ones to feed the human race. I hope that people will support NS/S because it needs to expand it's work. NS/S needs to be able to multiply enough plants that they can afford to eliminate individual plants with genetic defects, and avoid inbreeding "bottlenecks", a common problem with seed saving.