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Post by nicollas on Feb 12, 2014 2:18:16 GMT -5
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 12, 2014 10:01:54 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. I tend to think of Glass Gem as less of a stabilized variety, its more like a semi-selected breeding material. It appears to me that Carl Barnes primary goal for this one was as an ornamental, the popcorn genetics were selected for to increase the glassy/translucent visual effect rather than to make it a true popcorn. Not that I have a line on Carl's brain, I'm just guessing based on what I see in the corn. It would be interesting to find out what he thinks/thought about Glass Gem. There are rumors that Carl Barnes passed away a few years ago. Since Glass Gem was given to Bill McDorman he's done much more to hype its visual beauty and vague "heirloom Cherokee" origins than its functionality, both at Seeds Trust and at Native Seeds/SEARCH. I lay the entire Glass Gem craze at his feet, he started it, he gave it energy, he involved NS/S from his position as executive director. If he has done much selection on Glass Gem, I bet he's selected it for its ornamental appeal. If I were going to work with this corn, I'd probably want to get my seed from Gray. His stuff is most likely to have the maximum diversity being derived from an earlier generation of the mix and having grown in such a long season climate. All of it is able to finish out and dry down for him.
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Post by gray on Feb 12, 2014 12:01:12 GMT -5
Tim I wish someone with knowledge of working with corn and a long growing season would take up the task. The person on this site that fits that bill is probably Darrel. He doesnt seem interested in even receiving any of the seed. He did tell me maybe later. I think he has other priorities.
I can tell you though that my family loves to pop the corn. Our results in coconut oil are about 30% pops. But the old maids the unpoped are delicious as a corn nut. We put them on salads and love it.
My wife made a $2000 corn bread the other night. ie 2 cups of kernels. We really like it. We also take the course ground flour and make grits. Its texture is creamier than store bought but the flavor is awesome to us.
With all that said we have never eaten any other homegrown corn except the glass gem to be able to compare. I hear the red floriani is good and gourmets like it. I am going to get some and try it to compare.
All in all we like to eat the corn. I will continue to grow it for this reason and to preserve the line I received that should be what Carl Barnes accomplished if for no other reason that that. Gray
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Post by flowerweaver on Feb 13, 2014 12:37:30 GMT -5
I have seen it listed both as a popcorn and a flint corn. gray it's interesting to hear of someone actually eating the stuff, especially considering it's poor popping rate. Because of my long growing season, and out of curiosity, I have thought about trying some. I am going to be growing many varieties of dent/flour corns this spring. Joseph Lofthouse I think you mentioned you keep your popcorn and sweet corn separated, for obvious reasons. Would it be a travesty to throw a few glass gems into a dent/flour mix to see what happens? Or would you keep it separated from them, too.
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Post by blueadzuki on Feb 13, 2014 13:53:54 GMT -5
That actually brings up something I was wondering about. Given that GG has now been around a while and there are people who are trying to move it into the other corns (like Josephs popcorn plan) has anyone tried to make a GG sweetcorn. That is, a sweetcorn that has the GG palette (let's face it, whenever we talk about what we want out of GG in any cross, it is and always will be primarily those colors we are trying to move.). I know that there is an extra hurdle here (namely that most of the colors of GG would not show up until LONG after the sweetcorn would be too old to be salable as corn on the cob.) But it is a little odd that I haven't heard of someone trying. In fact there may actually be some sort of block involved. A few nights ago, I went through the glass bottle (where I store sweetcorn kernels I have picked out of Indian corn cobs) with a flashlight, and I don't think I saw ANY kernels that had a color I could place as being GG (and bear in mind what I said earlier, around here; MOST of the Indian corn on the market is part GG by now.)Or very few (I seem to recall those speckled sweecorn kernels I found a few years ago were turquoise). but it might be worth a try (if anyone does do this, and wants a name, may I suggest the obvios pun, "Sweet n'Glassy" More directly answering your question, while I do not definitely KNOW waht would happen if you tossed a little GG into a flour dent mix, never having done it yet; I have seen enough cobs over the fall seasons to have a pretty good idea of what the results would look like. GG color on a dent would probably look quite a bit like Earth Tones, assuming it was a similar blocky dent (if it was the more gourdseed shaped corn it mike look a bit like the other Indian corn that shows up from time to time around here, the one that, apart from having some kernels with purple and brown tones, looks just like feed corn (I suspect that one is also the result of an accidental cross, in this case, pollen from a colored ornamental flint getting into a field where the indian corn grower were growing regular field corn (around here, a lot of the corn sold as whole stalks for ornaments is field corn, not flint.) Crossed with a flour, you could get a lot of results. Most likey you'd get what I call "cap" corn or "shell corn"; kernels with soft starch insides covered by a hard starch shell (same as dent, except the soft doesn't touch the outside at any point, and so doesn't sink down at drying to make the "dimple". On a cob basis, it'd look a lot like the GG palette-wise, except that because of the soft starch centers, the kernels would be opaque, not translucent. I see kernels like that from time to time. Some colors look good that way visually, some don't (same way some colors look pretty under a reddish pericarp, and some look terrible.) I suspect the variety I used to have I called "Old Soft Soap" probably came from such a cross, though where it got it's OTHER trait baffles me (I called it "Old Soft Soap becuse the kernels had an odd trait, the pericarps were so thick and so smooth the kernels were actually so slippery it was hard to hold them; they'd literally slip out of your hands!)
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Post by 12540dumont on Feb 13, 2014 21:31:39 GMT -5
Gray, Florianni is one the "BEST" polenta/grits corn I have ever grown. Based on just taste. I'll also say that I think Cherokee Flour is the BEST flour corn I have ever had based on taste. PM me and I'll send you some Florianni to plant. So you can try it side by side with Glass Gem. I like Texas Gourdseed as Flour corn ....and Tohono O'odham as a very quick season flour corn. (which is probably what I will have to grow this year, due to the drought.) I don't think I could ever go without Florianni again! In my long talks with Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills, he believes that something was lost when the corn was brought here. A much larger population of corn probably should have been taken. It's a red Trentino Flint, and was almost extinct in Italy as well. I'm glad that it's here, and I just hope Cortona can one day find more Red Trentino for me that I can add to this corn. I would love to increase it's productivity. But I don't want to add any other corn to it. Gray, thanks for keeping Glass Gem alive, till Dar has time to play with it
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 13, 2014 22:58:02 GMT -5
I have not made a glass gem cross with sweet corn, but I can partially address the other issues. I have made a popcorn to sweetcorn cross. The reason I made the cross is that I am seeking a shorter season popcorn. So I detasseled my earliest (60 DTM) sweet corn and pollinated it with two different kinds of popcorn: my popcorn, and Cherokee popcorn which is another of those wild popcorns that's pretty much a popcorn in name only, but not in any sort of objective way. Sure it pops much better than Glass Gem, but that's like saying that my ox plows better than my mule. Neither one is a Deere. In the F2 seed there some normal looking sweet corn kernels. There are no dents. Some of the cobs have only sweet kernels or glassy kernels, some have about 25% floury kernels (with soft white endosperm throughout the kernel), some have a lot of glassy kernels with a layer of soft starch opposite the tip. I have had tremendous success selecting Astronomy Domine sweet corn for great color in the fresh eating stage. Some colors appear more reliably sooner than others. Red pericarp is particularly precocious but not necessarily easy to select for. Not an issue for Glass Gem though since red pericarp is so rare. The aleurone coloring like is in glass gem tends to show up later and to not be as intensely colored. Still, the colors in the attached photo resulted from only two years worth of selection for early color. I suspect that glass gem would show similar progress. I estimate that it's a 4-5 growing seasons project to move the glass gem color pallet into a sweet corn and select for colors that are early enough to show up in the fresh eating stage.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 13, 2014 23:15:07 GMT -5
Would it be a travesty to throw a few glass gems into a dent/flour mix to see what happens? Or would you keep it separated from them, too. I'd mix dents, flours, and glass gem. If you are growing animal feed one corn is as good as any other. Glass gem makes good grits or cornbread. I like to let hard-flint flours soak in water for a few hours, because flints like glass gem can tend to remain gritty in something that cooks fast like pancakes. I prefer flour corns with soft starch for most of the corn mush/bread dishes that I prepare.
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Post by steev on Feb 13, 2014 23:34:07 GMT -5
The uniform color of that cob, three from the left, on top, is striking.
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Post by flowerweaver on Feb 14, 2014 2:21:17 GMT -5
OK, I'll throw some GG into the mix. I'm growing it all for cornmeal--we eat a lot of tamales down here! --and other things since I am gluten intolerant.
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Post by gray on Feb 15, 2014 17:05:34 GMT -5
I placed a seed order with Carol Deppe the other day and sent her a couple oz. of the Glass Gem. I dont know what the length of growing season is in Corvallis Oregon, but would love for her to work with it or pass it on to someone who would.
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Post by gray on Feb 15, 2014 17:07:22 GMT -5
Holly maybe you or Joesph can use your influence to get Dar to play with the corn.
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Post by 12540dumont on Feb 15, 2014 17:39:24 GMT -5
Not a chance. Dar is busy working on Fusion Power, Tomatoes, and God knows what all. As we speak he's probably in the greenhouse with 700 tomatoes!
You'll just have to get in line, or find a nice college student to make it a project.
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Post by gray on Feb 17, 2014 15:28:34 GMT -5
Whats Fusion Power?
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Post by steev on Feb 17, 2014 19:48:29 GMT -5
Self-reportedly, Fusionpower is a "REAL" rainmaker.
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