|
Post by oxbowfarm on Aug 5, 2011 5:28:12 GMT -5
I'd like to know if anyone has grown this corn? I have three accessions of white flour corn that I got from GRIN. After reading the Resilient Gardener I became convinced that the corn that I'd been working with was probably not as functional for human food as using the flour and flint types as described so well in her book. I had been doing a mass cross of 5 different dent corn varieties of different colors to create I don't know what exactly.
In any case, after reading Carol Deppe's book I decided to focus on flour corns, most specifically using Tuscarora. Tuscarora was mentioned in her book as being a nice white flour corn also useful as a roasting ear. Not to mention that it is an historical variety that was extremely likely to have been grown by the Haudenosaunee in this area. But I was unable to find a source for seed so I went on GRIN and found three corns that sounded as if they were simply Tuscarora under a different name ( ie. Six Nations Flour #1, Six Nations Flour #2, Okswegen Flour corn) that were all described as a tall 8-row white flour corn grown by the Haudenosaunee.
Unfortunately I was unable to plant this spring due to freakish amounts of rain and the necessity of planting market vegetables in all my open ground until it was too late to plant the small amount of seed I have.
But I am wondering about it's characteristics generally. Height, maturity speed etc.
I'd like to cross it with Painted Mountain or Carol Deppe's Magic Manna series ( if they ever become available) to create something similar to Magic Manna based on Tuscarora, a series of breeding sister lines of different color classes/flavor classes built on the base of the corn ancestral to this region.
Any help or thought would be appreciated.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 5, 2011 10:40:53 GMT -5
Carol gardens in a very unusual and specialized climate. The plant varieties and cultivation methods that she recommends may be bogus for other areas of the world. Moving a variety from her climate (the wettest/cloudiest) to my climate (the driest/sunniest) is perilous.
I believe that the magic about Carol's books is not in the plant recommendations, it's in her way of looking at the world.... That we as individuals can take control of our own seeds, and our own food supply, and turn it into what we really want to eat, and what grows great for us in our climate/soil, and what works well in our village/family culture.
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Aug 5, 2011 11:56:34 GMT -5
Hi Oxbow, Joseph is the go to guy around here for corn related questions, and I always take his advice very seriously. The photo attached is of Carol's Cascade Cream Cap. My weather is wet in the winter to bone dry in the summer. We have two seasons, lose your boot or break your shovel. Carol was worried about the performance of her corn here. In my humble opinion it is doing fine. Here it is August 5, and I have cobs on...plenty of time to dry down and probably even replant this bed for fall/spring. Now this is something I have learned from Joseph...the second year you plant something it does better than it did the year before (from your own saved seed). You can find your Tuscarora White at "Seed Dreams" in Port Townsend, WA. These are great folks. Tessa and Shane have done grow-outs for Carol. They are not a "seed company" they are a seed saving project. Note, their minimum order is 5 packs for $20. Lots of good stuff here. Seeddreams.blogspot.com Good luck with your project. I'm working with Italian corns...corns from America that went to Italy and came back again. But that's a different story Attachments:
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 5, 2011 12:09:09 GMT -5
That crooked stalk is interesting! Is it common for the variety?
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 5, 2011 12:32:41 GMT -5
Now this is something I have learned from Joseph...the second year you plant something it does better than it did the year before (from your own saved seed). Even without intentional selection for the best growing plants this is happening naturally. Plants that don't thrive in my garden produce fewer seeds and less pollen so that the population is selected in favor of the plants that thrive, even if I save seeds from every plant. For example a bean that thrives and produces 200 seeds will be more heavily represented in the offspring than a bean that only produces 10 seeds. I like to save seed only from the best producing plants, but even if I don't the population is still moving in that direction. I was so careful this spring with my spinach landrace to weed out the weak plants, and the quick bolting plants, etc... But even if I hadn't those plants that thrived and waited to bolt until after the plant was huge have produced 50 times more seeds than the smaller plants would have. The low performance plants would eventually get swamped out.
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Aug 5, 2011 14:02:41 GMT -5
Joseph, Here's the stand. I don't think it's typical. It just caught my eye. There was a crooked man who had a crooked house.... Attachments:
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Aug 5, 2011 14:04:23 GMT -5
Hey Joseph, one of these corns in the posole is pink! Talk about Avenue of the Giants. These are now 3x as tall as me. Attachments:
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Aug 5, 2011 14:05:55 GMT -5
Pink! Pink! Pink! Attachments:
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Aug 5, 2011 14:24:44 GMT -5
Carol gardens in a very unusual and specialized climate. The plant varieties and cultivation methods that she recommends may be bogus for other areas of the world. Moving a variety from her climate (the wettest/cloudiest) to my climate (the driest/sunniest) is perilous. I believe that the magic about Carol's books is not in the plant recommendations, it's in her way of looking at the world.... That we as individuals can take control of our own seeds, and our own food supply, and turn it into what we really want to eat, and what grows great for us in our climate/soil, and what works well in our village/family culture. What I am interested in from Carol Deppe's corn is the color/flavor genetics. According to her book, she got them from Painted Mountain. I have some Painted Mountain and if need be I can probably work from it to create what I am looking for, but it seems easier to use a series of corn that has already been selected for the color/flavor classes. This is all assuming that the same flavor/color relationships she finds in her corn hold true for corn grown in my climate. Her book is the only place I've ever seen any such thing written of. But it seems logical enough, and it gives me an interesting breeding goal, which I didn't have before. I am not trying to adapt Magic Manna to my climate, I am hoping to use some of its genetics to create a multi-line Tuscarora with some of the color/flavor genetics from Magic Manna. Tuscarora is already adapted to my climate, I just want a couple different colors of Tuscarora.
|
|
|
Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Aug 6, 2011 17:40:55 GMT -5
We've had a few quick discussions about how color affects flavor in corn before. Josephs Cherry flavored corn comes to mind. It's certainly an interesting topic.
Wow those Pink silks looks great! In other news i have spotted two corn plants this year with pink silks! One of them is on a stalk which is doing fantastic compared to most, and i suspect is from the variety Wade's Giant Indian Flint Corn. I marked them, so i can try and see if there is a correlation between seed colors and pink silks, and also so i can try and breed them with my purple corn stalks w/ purple leaves (but ironically have yellow silks).
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 6, 2011 20:14:31 GMT -5
Here's what one of the stalks of the cherry flavored sweet corn looked like yesterday. Most of them did not have purple silks.
|
|
|
Post by darwinslair on Aug 12, 2011 15:50:18 GMT -5
I have grown Iroquois White Flour, which is what Tuscarora is. This is my second year. It is much longer DTM than painted mountain. Stalks for me were about 10' with some lodging issues if you do not hill it. Ears are quite large, about 11-14" long. Most stalks give you two cobs. It needs much warmer soils to property germinate in, but if planted in warm soils I have nearly 100% germination. Yield is much higher than Painted Mountain and it has not stunted on my like painted mountain did this year. I would guess tasseling is about 25 days later than painted mountain.
Tom
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Aug 13, 2011 7:40:03 GMT -5
Thanks Tom, that is awesome information. So if I was to start planting Painted Mountain approximately 2 weeks later than Tuscarora and then a few succession plantings every week I should definitely get them tassling at the same time. I was thinking of a few rows of Tuscarora and then a pollinator row of Painted Mountain.
|
|
|
Post by darwinslair on Aug 13, 2011 8:33:00 GMT -5
Would be an interesting hybrid. The white flour is flat-out the best tasting flour corn I have ever grown. Some worries about errant gmo pollen, but I have it pretty isolated. (because it tassels so much later)
The ground rodents are destroying my painted mountain this year. Ears are too close to the ground with how stunted the plants are. I have a lot of seed in the freezer from prior years, but I will be lucky to get more than a few pounds from this growing.
White Flour is filling out ears now.
Tom
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Aug 13, 2011 23:35:39 GMT -5
Hey Tom, What are you grinding your corn with?
Also, without one of those moisture meters, do you have any rules as to when to get them out of the field.
I've got Cascade Cream Top in the field and it's filling nicely. Tonight we were talking about when to cut the water from it and how long to leave it in the field before harvesting the cobs. I'm not expecting rain till October...but boy I could sure use that field. I have 1100 onion sprouts just looking for a place to be.
|
|