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Post by darwinslair on Mar 24, 2011 22:40:02 GMT -5
i'm working on corn for exactly the same reason! dry land corn(flour corn is my goal) I have some short season mandan and chippewa flour and flint/flours. what zone are you in? Tom
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Post by cortona on Mar 31, 2011 13:07:14 GMT -5
Tom i live probably in 8/9 usda i live in central italy (town of Cortona) tuscany but near umbria, i have around 7 frost free months so if all goes good and the work go smooth in future i think i can have two crops of my corn one sring planted and one planted around the middle of august wen usualy here we have some rain. Emanuele
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 27, 2011 23:36:08 GMT -5
Today, April 27th, I planted Astronomy Domine sweet corn, LISP Ashworth sweet corn, and three corns from my breeding program: Ashworth X se+, Early Festival X se+, and Painted Hills X se+. This is 8 days earlier than my target planting date for early su corn. Looking for frost tolerance and early growth. (And a great early harvest if the weather is mild.) Today is about 30 days before our typical last frost date.
My cumulative GDD:10C for the season so far is 25.
Yesterday (April 26th) I planted popcorn, and Painted Mountain flour corn.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 3, 2011 11:49:29 GMT -5
Fascinating. Most of the corn has sprouted by now, and are about 1" tall. The interesting thing is that the other night we had some cold temps that went down to at least in the mid or upper 30's (F), which is not much above the freezing point. Anyway, my corn mix this year has a few new varieties in in to help prevent inbreeding depression, so i doubt most of the new ones are very frost tolerant.
Because of the cold temps the other night i see many of the corn seedlings now have a darkish green color and floppy leaves that will probably die above the surface. The interesting thing is that often there are corn seedlings right next to them that are doing fine, and dont look affected by the cold weather at all!! It seems fairly easy to figure out which ones are the most frost tolerant at this point. I look forward to watching those seedlings to see if they have the anthocyanin genes as well.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 11, 2011 23:39:51 GMT -5
Today (March 21st) I planted several thousand corn seeds. I'm screening for seeds that survive in cold soil, and/or for plants that are frost tolerant. This planting is about 10 weeks before our average last frost, and about 7 weeks before su sweet corn is typically planted here. I planted at two depths: About 1" and about 5". I'm wondering if planting deeper will aid in frost tolerance. Today, May 11th, (some of) the seeds planted one inch deep were sprouted. That is 7 weeks that they survived in cold unusually wet soil. I moved all that were visible to a different bed. My intent is to skew the population in favor of those plants that grow most vigorously in cold weather. I shook the soil off each plant so as not to transfer any unsprouted seeds. I couldn't tell by looking at the seed which variety/type they are. Cumulative GDD:10C for the year = 36. GDD since planting = 32. No sign yet of anything surviving from the September or December plantings. I planted some Ashworth X se+ sweet corn about 5 days ago (May 6th). I put a floating row cover over part of the patch. My intent is to harvest corn earlier. When I checked today the temperature of the soil under the cover was 9F (5C) higher than the uncovered soil at about 5" depth. The seeds under the cover have roots already. The others don't. Also planted another patch of Astronomy Domine (this one's for market).
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Post by happyskunk on May 12, 2011 1:18:29 GMT -5
I planted a small plot of mixed sweet and flour corn on March 17th (they are from Oaxacan Green, Painted Mountain, Pickaninny, Simonet, Bear Island, Japonica, etc. from last years crops) . I thought many of the plants died due to frost but just the tops froze and many have come back. About 20 plants did not show much damage from the frost at all. Still they are only a couple inches tall. I planted over a dozen flour/shoepeg/cancha/etc on April 24th and many are already looking better than the first batch. Do you think planting too early may stunt the plants? Also, I need to weed the first group for the third time. The second batch may only need to be weeded once. I hope to keep trying the March 17th plantings for a few years to see what happens.
I have also just planted Pickaninny, Joseph's Most Diverse (selection of small purple kernels), Joseph's Most Diverse (selection of colored kernels), Astronomy Domine, Sparkler, Double Red, Festivity, and Nauset. These were planted on May 8th with the seed spaced 1ft apart (no rows) in a bed about 50' x 14' (over 500 seeds).
I also planted some other sweet corn around May 1st. Rainbow Inca, Soltera Morado, Iochief, and Texas Honey June.
The flour/shoepeg/cancha etc batch includes Warners, John Beecham, Daymon Morgan's Chinmarked, Cherokee White Flour, Bloody Butcher, Maiz Morado, Pungo (selected chocolate colored kernels), Maiz Blanco Iturbide, Chulpi Cancha, All Over Red Cancha, Hopi Blue, Virginia White Gourd Seed, Blue Hopi x Texas Shoepeg, and Seneca Round Nose. It will be interesting to see what survives the wind storms. I wish I had time and money to build a support system since some of these may hit 20' tall.
Still hope to plant a few more plots of corn someplace (waxy corn? and my mixes of early and late corn from last year). I'm running out of space and I think the weeds are currently winning the war.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 12, 2011 1:36:40 GMT -5
HappySkunk: Sounds like fun!!!! Do you think planting too early may stunt the plants? My later plantings are like-wise growing faster than my earlier plantings. (Different fields though for whatever that means.) I'm running out of space and I think the weeds are currently winning the war. This is the first year that I am doing near perfect weeding early in the season. I've got some nasty patches of rhizomic grass that's giving me fits, but where it's too bad I'm digging out the grass roots and the crop both. Figure I'll keep after the grass vigorously this summer. I made a couple of custom hoes that sure are working well for me: Need to modify one of them still to give it a longer handle.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 1, 2011 18:02:09 GMT -5
Here is what my row of frost tolerant corn looked like today. They were planted a few months before the earliest that I dare plant typical corns. These are the survivors and the most vigorous growers out of thousands of seeds that were planted. Some of the plants are amazing: For example there are a couple that are working on producing six cobs per plant:
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Aug 1, 2011 20:39:10 GMT -5
wow, i am constantly amazed at some of the things that you convince to grow in your fields. This was a bad year for corn for me. We we see if i get any cobs this year. Fortunately i collected a lot of seed last year, so i have some backup seed that i can fall back on if i don't get very much this year.
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Post by raymondo on Aug 2, 2011 3:10:02 GMT -5
Six cobs! I don't know much about corn but that seems amazing. Is it?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 2, 2011 10:34:32 GMT -5
I'm very tickled with 6 cobs per plant.
What that amounts to is that the plant grew 3 stalks of equal size and that each stalk contained 2 ears of corn. The typical usa corn plant produces one stalk with one or two cobs. Some people don't like tillers on corn, but if they are going to triple my yield of cobs and of biomass then I'm happy as can be with tillers.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Aug 2, 2011 13:51:46 GMT -5
I'm very tickled with 6 cobs per plant. What that amounts to is that the plant grew 3 stalks of equal size and that each stalk contained 2 ears of corn. The typical usa corn plant produces one stalk with one or two cobs. Some people don't like tillers on corn, but if they are going to triple my yield of cobs and of biomass then I'm happy as can be with tillers. And it looks like it might also be another one with pinkish silks. I wonder if you know the parentage of this 6 cobed plant? Are you sure this is just one plant with many tillers, or could it be several seeds that were planted close together?
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Post by DarJones on Aug 2, 2011 17:24:20 GMT -5
a couple of varieties of corn are noted for producing 6 or even more cobs on a single stalk. They get into problems with pollination since pollen is usually available for about 10 days. Several sweet corns that I have grown tend to produce tillers with most ending in an ear of corn. I grew Buhl this year and got quite a few plants that made 3 to 6 ears of corn by producing 3 stalks per plant.
DarJones
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 2, 2011 22:37:31 GMT -5
I am certain that it is only one plant, because they were transplanted after they sprouted, and I shook the soil from the seedlings so that I would not inadvertently move a seed that did not conform to the specification of being the earliest to germinate.
I may be able to speculate on the parentage in about a month when the cobs mature. The planting contained a huge number of varieties of corns: Flints, dents, flours, sweets, hybrids, and races from Mexico and the Andes.
Buhl is a possible parent, but since I haven't grown Buhl as a variety, I might not be able to ID a Buhl plant.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Aug 4, 2011 7:02:38 GMT -5
One of the wax stalks in particular has at least half a dozen tillers. No cobs though. Not yet at least. I'll keep my eye on it.
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