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Post by toad on Oct 11, 2015 14:19:32 GMT -5
Playing with corn in my small garden, I face two major problems. My summers are cold, almost too cold, and I grow too few plants to keep a decent breeding population. A few years ago I started growing corn for the first time since giving it up as a teenager. I obviosly want to save (some of) my own seed. Corn varieties you can buy around here are all sweet corn. After reading on corn (incl. Carol Deppes books), I decided to try Mandan Parching Lavender, as parching to me was an unknown and sensible way to prepare corn. It's like the Tao of cereals. Easy to prepare, easy to eat, easy to store and easy to digest. It turned out to be delicious too. I can grow it in good and average summers, althoug plants are dwarf, but in a summer like this, it was a very small harvest of cobs with few kernels, on up to knee high plants. Last winter I decided to start to mix it, and got hold of Cascade Ruby-Gold, some decorative corn from Russia and some grown for years and mixed by danish homesteader, cook and writer Camilla Plum. DSCN8057 by Søren Holt, on Flickr Camilla Plum's fared much better than any other. On top is a small Mandan Parching Lavender, and under the others a Cascade Ruby-Gold, where the kernels are scattered on the cob. DSCN8058 by Søren Holt, on Flickr In front a "decorative" russian corn. Left behind:Camilla Plum's corn. Behind, right to the "decorative" is a cob of Cascade Ruby-Gold. Far right is Mandan Parching Lavender. I grew far more Mandan Parching Lavender, as many as the rest together. In all aprox. 50 corn plants. I'm uncertain how best to dry the not completely ripe cobs. Decided for drying them as I usually do, and hope enough kernels will germinate next summer.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 12, 2015 11:08:41 GMT -5
toad when you are drying really "wet" corn like that, I think it is best to take the husks off and dry each ear separately on a rack or a corn board like this. Bunching wet husks like that leads to mold which then attacks the base of most of the ears. There are techniques for braiding ears together with the husks but they usually leave more space for each ear to dry out than that bunch you have there.
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Post by toad on Oct 12, 2015 12:16:37 GMT -5
Thanks Oxbowfarm! I will make a similar board for drying corn.
I guess this also means, that my corn will germinate OK, if I get it to dry without molding?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 12, 2015 12:22:47 GMT -5
toad: Your corn seeds look mature enough to me to be plenty viable. What's up with the sparse pollination? Do you have a lot of wind in your garden?
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Post by toad on Oct 12, 2015 12:37:05 GMT -5
What's up with the sparse pollination? Do you have a lot of wind in your garden? For a garden in Denmark, it's not windy, but I garden in a country covered in windmills. It's not hard wind, but persistent most days. Also, the male flowers were more or less stunted. Often I couldn't make them throw pollen if tapping the stem. At quite a few of the plants, the male flowers never unfolded. I noticed, that most of the corn cobs have kernels mostly on one side - a sign of wind during pollination?
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Post by DarJones on Oct 12, 2015 18:38:44 GMT -5
one sided ears are usually the result of pollen getting to the silks from the top of the ear and not from the bottom silks. It usually means inadequate pollen volume. Plant corn in solid blocks at least 3 meters wide by 3 or more meters long.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 12, 2015 21:32:10 GMT -5
Thanks Oxbowfarm! I will make a similar board for drying corn. I guess this also means, that my corn will germinate OK, if I get it to dry without molding? It looks mature enough to me to make good seed. I like the corn boards, but a simple wire shelf or rack, or anything where you can spread the ears out with good air circulation while they dry would work. My wife is not as fond of the corn boards as I am. I cannot imagine why she doesn't like boards laying all over the house with hundreds of nails sticking out of them? They can be a little scary when they are empty. And a bit hard to store. I try to face mine together and stack them in a pile in the shed when they are not full of corn. Right now they are full of corn!
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Post by RpR on Oct 13, 2015 10:46:34 GMT -5
one sided ears are usually the result of pollen getting to the silks from the top of the ear and not from the bottom silks. It usually means inadequate pollen volume. Plant corn in solid blocks at least 3 meters wide by 3 or more meters long. I had some of those sad looking ears myself. I was amazed that my corn plots were in such density that at minimum I should have had cross pollination filling an ear if nothing else but I still had some ears that were only half filled or filled only on one side and a few that looked as sad as yours. The odd thing is, sometimes I will have odd-ball corn stalks from me dropping kernels or squirrels burying ones that stand out by themselves like the Old Lonesome Pine, give nice full ears of corn. Possibly due to the sheep poop I added many of my sucker-stalks became full-on stalks of corn, although ear production this year was below what I expected, whereas last year even with the pathetic stand of corn I had, ear production was good for the few stalks. What plant spacing did you use? I have over the decades used from 4 inches to 12 inches between individual seeds (depending on type of corn planted) and from 18 to thirty inches between rows. I have found too dense is worse than too far apart.
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Post by toad on Oct 14, 2015 13:58:39 GMT -5
3x3 meter is more than I can offer my corn. But instead of two groups of corn, I could grow same number of plants in a single group. I've been thinking of mixing broad beans/favas and thus give a little more distance between the corn plants. In my other plantbreeding projects I tend to grow at half distance, to doubble the individuals to select from. Anybody been growing corn and potatoes for storing together?
Drying board: when looking for the nails, I thought where to store the board most of the year in a small house? I decided to put them on an airy shelf. I turn them every day, and they are in the house with central heating, should dry fairly quick.
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Post by Marches on Mar 16, 2016 3:09:32 GMT -5
What's up with the sparse pollination? Do you have a lot of wind in your garden? For a garden in Denmark, it's not windy, but I garden in a country covered in windmills. It's not hard wind, but persistent most days. Also, the male flowers were more or less stunted. Often I couldn't make them throw pollen if tapping the stem. At quite a few of the plants, the male flowers never unfolded. I noticed, that most of the corn cobs have kernels mostly on one side - a sign of wind during pollination? I would be looking at breeding dwarfs in a windy climate.
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Mar 17, 2016 7:38:48 GMT -5
You need a block of corn, more than one or two rows.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 19, 2016 10:19:28 GMT -5
Nice corn Søren! Looking good. I think you can grow corn just fine where you are if you use the right genetics. I look forward to seeing more of your corn in the future!
When i first started out it was fairly common to get sparse cobs like that. In my case i had planted two or three long rows rather than in a large square. I've successfully grown corn in a 10ft x 10ft (~10 sq. m?) square with corn planted a foot apart. Technically i probably have more room than that, but i haven't tried going any bigger. Since corn is basically a grass i guess it needs to be planted and treated as such. Some people isolate their corn by great distances to prevent cross pollination, but as Joseph has mentioned before, and my own observations is that while corn pollen might be able to travel far in a heavy gust of wind, often light breezes only push the pollen a foot or two away at most as the pollen is very heavy.
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Post by toad on Mar 27, 2016 10:29:00 GMT -5
I just got some more corn genes :-) Shawnee corn (blue-black) and Bear Island Chippewa Flint corn. Just a little of each, but enough to bring in new genes in my mix. Is it reasonable cultivars to try?
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