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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 8, 2011 19:25:11 GMT -5
I thank God that I had ancestors that knew how to select corn and bean seeds, because if it was up to me, we'd all starve.
I'm sitting here looking a Carol's Cascade Creamcap and trying to pick the ears to save corn from.
There's 8 row corn and 12 row corn. The 12 row is 11 inches long. the 8 row is about 8 inches long. Now, the 8 inch is already dry, but the 12 inch is still drying.
So, if I select the biggest, they are harder to dry down, and if select for the smaller, well they're smaller.
So, I have 3 bowls going, the middles from the biggest, the middles from all the most beautiful 8's, and a bowl of side ears.
Dar? Tom? Joseph? Civilization is depending on you, because left to me, I'm going to be bald from pulling out my hair and these bowls will keep staring at me. So, can you all give me your thoughts about choosing corn seeds from the cob?
Thank you. I'm going to go can my pears. Regards, Holly
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 8, 2011 20:50:59 GMT -5
I'm currently timing 25 minutes for my last batch of "mild picante sauce" which is in the water bath canner.
Select what you want from the corn. Civilization will continue, or not, regardless of what choices you make: And our however many great grandchildren will sit around and talk about us. How we left them with such-and-such legacy in our corn, and if we had only made different choices way back then, how different their breeding work would be.
My selection strategy is roughly like this:
Take 20 kernels from each cob that I selected (which for my early breeding projects is nearly every plant in the patch.) Save them together as a bulk lot of seed. Plant them together.
Take ~100 kernels from the premium cobs: However I am defining premium today. Save each cob in it's own seed packet, with a short description about what they are and why I selected them. Plant about 7 kernels from them ear-to-row next season. (Or into a semi-isolated patch if I have many cobs selected for similar reasons.) I plant my ear-to-row packets in long continuous rows with breaks about 3 feet long between packets.
Rub off the rest of the kernels in bulk. This will probably end up being fed to the chickens, but I keep it as a backup in case something goes wrong with the other seed. If someone just has to have something from my project, and I don't have other seed, this is what they get.
I don't care if I save seed from the butt, or the middle of the cob, but I tend to avoid saving tip kernels because they are smaller, and I feel like smaller seeds would have less energy and be less vigorous. I understand that some people like to save seeds only from the middle third of the cob thinking that the butt kernels are more likely to be pollinated by kernels not in the mainstream of the pollen shed. I wonder if selecting only butt kernels would shorten the days-to-maturity?
Do you get two smaller cobs per plant but only one larger cob? How does the threshed weight per plant compare? Do you get higher prices for larger cobs? Do you get twice the income for two smaller cobs? If you get smaller corn to market earlier do you sell corn what you wouldn't otherwise sell? I grew painted mountain flour corn this year... It was so early that I was able to take bushels of it to the farmer's market very early in the season, and it sold. If I have to wait until October for my later-maturing decorative corn, our local farmer's markets have already closed by then. I'll be converting my popcorn to an earlier variety.
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Post by canadamike on Oct 8, 2011 21:11:41 GMT -5
Butt kernels selection is actually a way to select for earlier maturity...it is a factoid amongst corn breeders.
The great corn breeder Victor Kucyk confirmed it, in my mind it is gold...but I was, like many of us I think , already doing it in sweet corn selection
And it really seems to work...it did for me anyway...not in an ''incredible manner'' it is more subtle than that, OP corn is such a variable and , frankly, having a mind of its own kind of beast...
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 8, 2011 23:03:25 GMT -5
Well I broke the cobs in half to get the middles, so I still have the butts off to one side. So I can still use the butt seed.
This is a flour corn and I'm going to grind it, so anything not reserved for seed, is going in that pile. I'm making half into polenta and half into corn flour.
But as I was making piles, it came to me that if the weather gets hotter, we want bigger cobs, where as if the weather is going to be wetter, we want the smaller cobs. The corn grew with almost 2 cobs to every stalk. Some of them were 12 row, some 8. There were some gaps between the rows, and I set those cobs aside. I also made a separate pile of the ones that looked like maple gold, and I was going to fold those back in. (I sent the Ruby Gold off to Oxbow).
Now darn it, I wish I had pulled some off in the field and weighed the difference between to mediums and one large. Because I didn't pick them into different bins, I now don't know which ones had 3 ears (which would have made this choice easy).
What do you think about planting the 8's in one row and the 12's in another next year? I'm so frustrated at not knowing what the heck I'm doing. Corn is SO mysterious. I feel like I'm on the softball field and all the ears are saying "pick me" ...you'll be sorry if you don't.
I'm making pear butter and "pear, port, and thyme conserve", earlier today I made pumpkin butter and I'm frustrated that I don't have a pH meter. I had to freeze the pumpkin butter because I can't test to see if the acid is high enough to can. grumble grumble. It all comes of pigs.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 9, 2011 0:04:36 GMT -5
I thought this spring that I would plant a patch of corn that came from a cob with 22 rows, and a patch of corn that came from cobs with only 8 rows. They were both hybrids having pollen donors with about 14 rows.
The plants from the 8 rowed cobs were all over the place in rows of kernels produced, none of them having 8 rows.
The descendents of the 22 rowed cob were very thick and produced cobs with many rows of kernels. I haven't counted yet, but I'd say they were closer to 18 rows of kernels.
Days to maturity is more important to me than number of rows of kernels, because if a plant matures before our fall rainy season starts, then it dries quickly regardless of how many rows of kernels it has... If it matures after our rainy season starts, and it gets cold, (they are synonyms in my garden) then it is going to take a long time to dry regardless of whether it's a thick cob or a thin cob.
It looks like the sugary enhanced cross with Earthtones dent is going to produce cobs that are very thick with many rows of kernels.
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Post by raymondo on Oct 9, 2011 4:08:35 GMT -5
I sympathise Holly. I don't know arse from elbow when it comes to corn. God help me as I begin to select for a decent flour corn!
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 9, 2011 6:12:46 GMT -5
I was just re-reading the corn section of the Resilient Gardener (mostly because I got the package containing RubyGold from Holly, Thankyou very much). Carol states that in her opinion there is no genetic programing for row number,only seed size and cob size. So if you have the genetics for large seeds and small cobs you get big seeded 8-row corn. IF you have the big cob gene and the small seed gene you get 12 or more rows, this is for her Cascade flints.
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Post by DarJones on Oct 9, 2011 14:35:18 GMT -5
Oxbow, I can't agree with that. Mangelsdorf documented quite a bit of the variation in row count and ear size. If you note, the rows are always in pairs because that is the structure of the cob sections. Further, the pairs of rows only develop seed in one of the two cupules. (Country Gentleman shoepeg corn develops seed in both cupules giving the effect of too many kernels in too little space) I don't have a good way to represent this except maybe to make a comparison with a pistol with 6 cylinders. The hox genes behave similar so that each time you rotate through them, you get another pair of rows of kernels. 4 times give you the standard 8 row corn. 5 times gives 10 row corn, 6 times gives 12 row corn, etc. The regulatory genes that control the sequence don't just jump one number at a time though so you might have 8 row corn growing beside 16 row corn meaning it went through the sequence twice as many times to make the 16 row variant. They are also not fixed in discrete amounts. If you cross an 8 row corn with a 24 row corn, you could get every row count in between but would not specifically get any 24 row or any 8 row. You might think of it like applying black shoe polish. The more polish you apply, the darker the shoe gets. The more you polish the shoe, the brighter the shine. The effect in corn is similar, up-regulate the control mechanism for rows and you get more rows. Up it some more and you get more rows. This effect becomes extreme in the variant types that produce ears looking more like a pineapple than an ear of corn.
Kernel size is a more fixed quantity based on how much phytonutrient the plant can produce. If you have only 8 rows of kernels and a very vigorous healthy plant, then the individual kernels will be larger. If you have 16 rows of kernels, then the nutrients available on a per kernel basis is much lower resulting in smaller kernels but many more of them. The key to look for is not rows of kernels, but rather how much total weight of mature kernels are produced.
This reminds me that I need to cross Pencil Cob corn with one of the 24 row variants and develop a small cob variant. Pencil cob typically has 8 to 12 rows of kernels. It has less space between rows than normal corn resulting in the very small total ear size with highly compressed kernels.
DarJones
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 9, 2011 15:18:05 GMT -5
I harvested some painted mountain cobs this fall with 4 rows of kernels. I didn't find that to be a particularly useful trait, so I sold them at the farmer's market.
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 9, 2011 15:55:35 GMT -5
Dar, There were a few pencil cobs in Carol's corn...I know this because they broke in the sheller.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 9, 2011 18:45:29 GMT -5
Dar, I'm not wedded to the idea myself, just paraphrasing from Deppe's book. Just thought it was relevant because the passage itself was speaking about this exact variety.
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Post by steev on Oct 10, 2011 17:35:48 GMT -5
Holly,I don't understand the acidity problem? in pear butter. Are you canning in water bath? I only know pressure cooker for unpickled low-acid stuff. Just curious.
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 11, 2011 12:32:17 GMT -5
Not a pear problem...they have enough acid. It's a pumpkin problem. The USDA has decided that pumpkin butter does not have a high enough acid to can. With a pH meter, I could have kept adding lemon until it was safe. Without one, I'm only guessing, and I hate botulism roulette.
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Post by steev on Oct 11, 2011 21:00:15 GMT -5
Ah, now I see why I looked up "canning winter squash" and then wondered why, when you'd mentioned pear butter. So the question stands; are you trying to use a water bath only? I ask because my info has no mention of acid in the pressure cooker method.
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Post by Alan on Oct 11, 2011 21:50:13 GMT -5
My two cents on selection criteria:
I don't often select in mass from cobs simply because I prefer to take a hard look at the whole plant as the season progresses and mark those traits first, from there I make ear selections based primarily on what I like. That said, it all depends on what you want, are you determined to preserve the phenotype that Carol Deppe desires or your own variant. If it is your own variant then I would simply make criteria based on what you want and select accordingly. I much prefer a larger kernal to a small one and tend to (when the genetics are available) select for cobs and kernals that facilitate eight rows of large kernals with some spacing between them to allow dry down in wet weather without as many mold issues but that's just me......more often however I select for the best while also maintaining the maximum amount of diversity but it's truly hard to select based only on looks and not flavor profile or nutrient profile or the density of the dried grain. I would say since Carols corn is still diverse to simply select for what pleases you, as the corn evolves in your area so to will your selection criteria as you see what works and what doesn't work.
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