You Can Grow Your Own Corn—and There’s Way More Than Sweet Corn

The crop requires planning and work, but the sweet rewards are well worth it

There are thousands of varieties of corn, with as many as 300 belonging to the Western Hemisphere.Pitagoras Abreu/Shutterstock

It’s just a specialized kind of grass.

That horticultural description applies to almost all grains, but corn is the only one that home gardeners revere, the only one grown for fresh use—in fact, the only grain commonly found in home gardens period.