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Post by gray on Feb 10, 2014 8:28:45 GMT -5
Joesph I would save that jar of seed. As you know I am not the corn expert you are. But a few observations. The seed that I gave you and others came from the folks that at least claim to have been gifted the seed by Carl Barnes.
My subsequent generations were grown by blending the entire growout nubs and all and growing a fairly descent size crop. I would guess that some of the other strains did not retain as much of the gene pool. Also many folks got to few seed to have a good representation of the gene pool.
I am also certain that my seed has not been cross pollinated. I saw some photos on the glass gem facebook page that are definitely crossed and not typical of what I have. There are also some photos that look real good or typical.
I have saved whole cobs in half gallon mason jars of all the typical cob color patterns. Maybe one day as people work with the corn the real benefits will come to light. And I will be here to maintain the "Gray Strain" as you call it.
BTW Deb PM me and send an envelope and I will send you the real thing. Gray
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Post by blueadzuki on Feb 10, 2014 9:20:41 GMT -5
Speaking from up here in the Hudson Valley, it seems that, by now, nearly ALL of the ornamental indian corn sold in the fall has at least SOME glass gem DNA in the population. While very little has the full rainbow that the pure stuff seems to have (you mostly see cobs of primarily one color with a smattering of the others.) but a lot of it now has kernels in shades of turqoise,forest green, magenta and apricot that are more typical of the Glass gem palette than the duller tones Northeastern ornamental corns used to have. It also means that at least some people up here aren't having trouble getting it to mature (though I will admit the amount of mold I see means a lot of people are selling before the stuff dries down, so maybe there are some with issues.) The David Shantz Farms (the group that supplies most of the "Indian corn" bunches to the supermarkets around me) Genepool DEFINITELY has some so some of my stippled stuff is probably part it (and that rainbow colored mini popcorn cob almost CERTAINLY does; since it looks like a GG cob shrunken down to 1/3 size.) most likely all of my better stipple, the stuff that's "crystal flint" probably got it from a GG infusion since, as far as I know, GG is the only crystal flint strain on the common market at the moment (now if I could only find a cob that had the stipple AND the palette g>).
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 10, 2014 9:35:30 GMT -5
The very worst thing to me about the Glass Gem craze was that Native Seeds/SEARCH was complicit in it. They weren't selling the seed for too much money but they did deliberately misrepresent/hype the history/story of the corn, created a special Facebook page for the corn, carefully released selected images of the prettiest ears, and dribbled the seed out, putting people on a waiting list etc to create a perception of rarity and increase the desire/percieved speciallness all out of proportion to the reality. They were also selling far to few seeds for folks to get the full diversity of the corn. Then they turn around and complain about the corn being scalped on ebay! Really distressing behavior from a company I had previously had the highest respect for.
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Post by gray on Feb 10, 2014 12:04:39 GMT -5
Tim I agree. My position has always been to share my knowledge and things such as seed that Christ has been gracious to give to me. I knew a woodworker here in town that would never talk to young people interested in learning in the name of not creating competition. With the internet today you can now find out all sorts of things that used to be "proprietary knowledge". Many folks dont take advantage of it. Like with this corn.
I will always send my seed to fairly long time HG members, free of charge. But when I see someone with one post and they are PM me for the corn I may require the SASE. It weeds out the lazy.
I had one person PM me a year ago or so called white bird or something like that. They had joined just to contact me. And wrote in a real weird way, calling me one and speaking like they were some kind of old indian shaman. I got the sense it was a woman. I will have to go back and look at my PMs. But she was wanting seed but claiming to know carl barnes. Told her it would be $5 bucks for 100 seeds and SASE and never heard from her again. Go figure.
Greed gets us all sometimes.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 12:59:16 GMT -5
OK tossing my jar of seed in the freezer. Makes me wish that I had laid my whole crop out side by side on the ground and photographed every ear. To document what the nearest to original that I know of looked like.
The days to maturity issue definitely skewed the population coming out of my garden. I only harvested about 1/3 of the crop.
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Post by gray on Feb 10, 2014 16:45:03 GMT -5
Joesph, how long will the seed store in the freezer? I have my cobs in sealed canning jars in my basement which stays about 50 degrees. How long will they remain viable in the basement if you know? Thanks Gray
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 18:59:07 GMT -5
Joesph, how long will the seed store in the freezer? I have my cobs in sealed canning jars in my basement which stays about 50 degrees. How long will they remain viable in the basement if you know? Thanks Gray For biological processes the rate of reaction approximately doubles/halves for every 10 C change in temperature. Lets assume the shelf-life of corn seed at room temperature is 5 years. Then a life expectancy chart would look like this: So storing the seed at 50 F doubles the shelf life of the seed. Storing them in the freezer basically puts them in suspended animation.
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Post by gray on Feb 11, 2014 9:35:16 GMT -5
So I would assume you would have to have the seed very dry.
BTW I never thanked you for the archive you sent me. Thank You!!! I am going to try and incorporte some of your varieties into my mix this year. In fact your slicer tomato is already growing. Gray
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 11, 2014 11:12:48 GMT -5
Gray: You're welcome.
At my place out here in the desert seed dries to about 8% moisture just sitting around the house. That's perfect conditions for long term storage, especially in something like a glass jar.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 11, 2014 16:37:30 GMT -5
Recently when I was reviewing the glass gem listings on eBay I wrote to every seller that claimed that Glass Gem is a popcorn, and asked them how well their strain pops. (I'd love to find a strain that pops well.) None of them answered the question. I felt like 3 of the 4 that answered dissembled. One was honest and said, "I don't know".
Cheeky of me I know...
Edit: I sent a second batch of queries today. I was very pleased with the results. They had actually tried popping it!
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Post by steev on Feb 11, 2014 20:34:56 GMT -5
And their results were...?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 11, 2014 20:57:22 GMT -5
And their results were...? "Not much popped, and what did was not fluffy" in oil. "hardly any remained unpopped" in air popper. "50% pop rate" in oil. "only about 30-40%" in oil. "hot air popper with good success"
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Post by steev on Feb 11, 2014 21:23:51 GMT -5
Not the result I'd have preferred, since I favor oil-popping.
BTW, anybody got a clue about the problem of seeds blowing out of an air-popper before popping, other than only using larger seeds?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 11, 2014 21:44:18 GMT -5
Not the result I'd have preferred, since I favor oil-popping. BTW, anybody got a clue about the problem of seeds blowing out of an air-popper before popping, other than only using larger seeds? Before I abandoned air popping in favor of oil, I used to tip my popper backwards at about 20 degrees. That (mostly) prevented unpopped kernels from flying out. I just tested... Sure enough. Glass Gem seed that was popping at 10% for me in oil popped at 18% in the air popper.
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Post by steev on Feb 11, 2014 22:41:12 GMT -5
Big woop! That doesn't strike me as much of an endorsement of its use as popcorn. Pretty? Yes! Useful? Not so much. Kind of like a "Daddy's little princess" who can't cook, fish, or cut bait.
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