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Post by esoteric_agriculture on Feb 6, 2017 14:04:57 GMT -5
I had some questions about a possible Flint x Gourdseed cross a while back. alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/8534/gourd-seed-crosses-questionThis is what the ears I collected looked like- I ended up saving the kernels I felt may have been crossed. Honestly I wasn't sure, and was kind of doubtful, but figured it couldn't hurt to plant them and find out what I ended up with. All the resulting plants were very vigorous and all had the growth habit of the Gourdseed, very tall, with strong stalks, high ears, no tillers, and lots of prop roots. When the ears formed, it was apparent that what I had planted out was in fact hybrid seed, as all the ears were basically white dent, maybe more of a flinty dent, but, a white dent, neither Gourdseed nor Flint in type. I hope this may be of some interest as I believe that the corn belt dents are descended from crosses of Gourdseed with Northern Flints. It seems like the strong, sturdy stalks of the Gourdseed are dominant over the weak, soft, multi tiller stalks of the Flint.
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Post by philagardener on Feb 6, 2017 19:15:58 GMT -5
Pretty ears, but looks like you need better pollination to fill out most of those ears. Are you planting in a block, as opposed to a row?
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Post by esoteric_agriculture on Feb 6, 2017 19:45:51 GMT -5
The ears that didn't fill out had very poor pollination because I had detassled that variety and the variety I was hoping to cross had a very different, earlier flowering time. In retrospect I ought to have planted the two varieties at different days to coordinate the bloom times. That never occurred to me until it was far to late unfortunately. The Flint flowered fairly early, the Gourdseed flowered very late, so there was very little overlap. I somehow missed detassling one of the Gourdseed plants, which is how I managed to get a few well filled ears . Fortunately there was a tiny amount of overlap between the two varieties, so I did get a few hybrid seed formed.
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