homegrown teosinte

it's new year's day and gunfire woke me up early...it's seventeen degrees fahrenheit outside and it snowed some last night ( though not as much as was forecast )...it's a holiday, i am not a sports fan, and i had time on my hands...the kinua and wild potatoes are doing okay and the yema de huevos replanting is on hold until the tubers produce a few more sprouts...time to start another winter project...so i went down in the basement and picked a few likely looking seed ears from the indoor teosinte...clearly they were ready since one of the ears shattered in my hand as i picked it...took them back upstairs and opened them and selected six of the darker seeds from the sixteen seeds the ears produced...normally northern tepehuan teosinte needs a cycle or two of cold to break dormancy and i usually sow them directly into the ground in mid-march ( which i will be doing in every garden i have a hand in this spring ) to accommodate this need...it's cold outside but i am trying to see if the seed the teosinte i grew last season will be viable for the next so i don't want to wait...so i soaked the seeds in a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes instead...i have no idea who figured this one out but i got the idea from dr. mary eubanks, who was a duke last time i contacted her and who has been exceptionally kind and helpful in answering questions from the laity...it has worked for me before when testing tesointe so the odds are that if this seed is viable it will germinate in the peat pellets i put the seeds in...if so some home made seeds will be going into gardens ( beyond the ones that i left on plants outdoors to shatter and reseed naturally ) along with the shiny store-bought ones...if these fail to germinate i will be going out back and getting seeds off the outdoor pants ( which should not need to be soaked...again, it's cold outside ) to see what they do...if anything...so more business in the basement...if these plants do take off i will be potting them and hardening them off to put out in the spring to give them that much more of a jump on the tesointe's one hundred and fifty-five day germination to flowering season...more as things come ( or don't ) up.