I knew commercial operations use weird corn that didn't grow right in small quantities, but didn't know why. That's interesting!

While this IS a large field, it's privately owned by someone my parents go to church with, and they go on at length about how you can go straight from stalk to kitchen and save some for planting and blah blah blah. . I've always wanted to test that, but so far it's been "doesn't grow in small quantities" so I'm starting to think either the church friend is exaggerating, or my mother is filling in gaps that she thinks sound right.

There's a patch of about 50-100 stalks on the edge of my yard, I'm guessing some spilled when they were harvesting since they drive through that corner to get the semis out.

I actually tried growing store bought seeds last year, but it was a dismal failure. We moved back to this house after a few years away and didn't get around to setting up a real garden this spring, so it's laundry-bin potatoes and (fingers crossed) yard corn lmao.