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Post by RpR on May 21, 2017 17:11:23 GMT -5
Well so far, and maybe that will be all, I finally planted six ten foot rows of the purple sweet corn I bought several years back. I followed the inoculation instructions but two seed per hole anyway. It figures it was in the eighties last week, but now on a hot day it is fifty degrees.
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Post by RpR on Jun 2, 2017 22:39:10 GMT -5
Well in the near future I will get down south to check on my purple sweet corn. It has been three week and for some reason I have a feeling when I get there I will see the same black dirt I saw when I finished planting. I have used corn that sat in a hot nasty garage for years and it still came up fairly well , so I though if I put it in the freezer , in a double plastic bag, it should keep well. My fear is the inoculation did more harm than good.
Next year, as people want me to grow sweet corn but are too damn lazy to do even minor things, like watering, when I am not there, I may plant just enough sweet corn to feed me -- ( I can no longer scarf down six or more ears per meal like I could just ten years ago) -- and go back to putting in the very tall dent and flour corns I put in to amaze people and get some really, really chubby squirrels.
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Post by steev on Jun 3, 2017 0:35:03 GMT -5
Sometimes you need to do what serves yourself; screw those who have preferences, but no in-put, lazy bastards.
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Post by RpR on Jun 14, 2017 13:24:26 GMT -5
One singe plant came up. I roto-tilled again the whole garden except where the potatoes were and was surprised just how damn hard and dry the soil was. I should have saved that one plant and replanted it but coulda, woulda, shoulda took over. I replanted three types of sweet corn True Gold, Silver Queen and I cannot remember the name now but why I had a packet of the extra sweet stuff I do not like mystifies me, as I bought it just last year, so I put it in any way. We had two inches of rain the day after I replanted so it has plenty of water.
An odd thing is only ten to fifteen days before we had more than normal rain but those days of dry very hot weather dried the ground out to four inches down where the ground was roto-tilled. Even the rose garden I had to till as it was brick hard and I put in new ones, was dry several inches down. Only good thing was few weeds more than an half an inch high.
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Post by RpR on Jun 28, 2017 12:50:27 GMT -5
No corn this year of any type. I replanted a month or so ago. Three types of sweet corn, approx. 120 seeds. Went down to check on it yesterday. 4 plants on the corner of one plot came up. I had this happen once a few years back with one packet of corn from Native American Seeds, but this was three types, from two companies. I guess, even though I doubt it is the soil, I will have to spend the bucks for soil tests.
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Post by DarJones on Jun 30, 2017 1:35:37 GMT -5
When I start sweet corn, I plant it in the garden and then start a tray of seed in the greenhouse. If the garden seed fails, I almost always have enough from the greenhouse to fill in a few rows. This year was not typical. I purchased some Silver King (se+) seed from a local seed store for my son to grow. The seed was 4 years old. We had 12 plants between what grew in the garden and the tray in the greenhouse. I purchased more seed from a different store and re-planted. This time we got very good germination and had to thin the corn back to 2 stalks per hill. I wound up with extra corn in the greenhouse tray.
In my garden, I have the following:
Supai Red Parch (grown from 20 year old seed originally from Seeds of Change back before they let it cross and messed up the genetics) Cherokee Squaw Sweet (a few sweet seed I found in Cherokee Squaw a few years ago) Silver King X Country Gentleman F2 (attempting to stabilize se with shoepeg) Bloody Butcher (for fresh seed) Iroquois Flour (first time growing, hope it is good flour corn) Gems disease resistant (2 lines planted together, hoping to see good rust resistance) (Country Gentleman X Silver King) X Cherokee Squaw (hoping to move the shoepeg trait into a dent background to imcrease oil content) Costa Rica Meal (First time to grow, checking if it is a decent white dent meal corn) Maize Morado (Want to see if I can mature it here, also may attempt to cross with popcorn) Inca Giant (aka Cuzco Giant white corn, trying again to get it to mature here) Multicolor Popcorn (to get fresh seed, mine is 10 years old. Also want to attempt crosses with Morado) Dugat's Cornmeal (want to see if it is worth growing for cornmeal, have a full row with pole beans planted beside it)
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Post by RpR on Aug 8, 2017 0:13:20 GMT -5
Three whole corn stalks showed up a few weeks ago. Ninety percentof the garden not in potatoes is a thriving patch of purslane, therefore; any problems is not that the soil is dead. I have never seen a pretty solid patch of purslane like that before.
I cleared out two former corn rows of purslane and moved the three stalks over to the garden edge; my cousin brought over six plants in his small garden as he though corn four inches apart was too close. He brought it over in a pail of water bare root! Well he planted them and I put more soil over the roots and gave them root booster and fertilizer. The second day they looked like it might be the last but the third day they looked like they might survive. Two weeks later five survived and looked fairly healthy except one half were already tasseling as were one of the three I moved over. Don't know if it was transplant shock or what but they had plenty water and good growing weather. I have had a few do that before so it could be anything.
Do not know if I will get any cobs but at least I have corn or it would have been the first time in fifty years I never had any corn, period.
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Post by steev on Aug 8, 2017 2:27:46 GMT -5
Purslane is a decent crop. if that's any comfort.
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Post by RpR on Aug 16, 2017 9:09:26 GMT -5
Well my 8 surviving corn stalks, at least six, are producing cobs, some of the little buggers are trying to make more than one. The other two look like they want to get bigger or are different seeds even though all corn came from two packets, one from each type is a odd-ball. How do you do that put a bag with tassel over cob for better germination. AS there are so few I think they need a helping hand. It is stupid but the fact I have even those eight and not zero for the first time in almost one half century, make me so much happier.
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Post by RpR on Sept 21, 2017 14:34:47 GMT -5
Out of eight stalks, I got three three inch cobs I ate raw, and the squirrels got two. Might be one late comer, if the squirrels do not get it.
IN a month I will turn it over by hand and see what comes up next year. I may split the garden East and West next year which I have not done in decades just to see how potatoes and corn differ in that mode.
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Post by richardw on Sept 23, 2017 14:11:58 GMT -5
My plans for corn this coming summer are to do a mixed popcorn block, ive got 100+ seeds of mini black, 7 seeds of strawberry which i thought i might mix with standard shop bought popcorn, see what comes out of that mix.
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Post by philagardener on Sept 23, 2017 14:48:12 GMT -5
My plans for corn this coming summer are to do a mixed popcorn block, ive got 100+ seeds of mini black, 7 seeds of strawberry which i thought i might mix with standard shop bought popcorn, see what comes out of that mix. Reminds me of the old joke "What's black and white and red all over?" (A newspaper)
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Post by richardw on Sept 23, 2017 19:39:46 GMT -5
oh gees, thats an old joke now that newspapers use colour photos
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Post by philagardener on Sept 23, 2017 19:58:03 GMT -5
Showing my age . . . , ahem, experience.
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Post by richardw on Sept 23, 2017 23:47:21 GMT -5
Showing my age . . . , ahem, experience. Thought that today when i had a break from gardening and went to sat down under the shade of the shelterbelt trees, "that bloody ground is a long way down but seems twice as far to get back up again, but hey i'm no old cot.. apparently
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