Corn Harvest 2017

[oxbowfarm]

Here's 90% of the harvest of my flint corn population this year.  Still not orange enough but its getting pretty darn flinty.  Percentage of red pericarp was less that 1%, still much more tinted pericarp than I'd like.  I did a bit of harvesting for collecting tamale wrappers, but I've had trouble figuring out the best way to do this.  Last year most of the husks molded, even though the ears were fine.  I'm beginning to think the best idea is to harvest with the shucks on, and then immediately cut them off the ear to dry them off the ear, where they dry very quickly.  Commercially available "hojas" definitely seem like they have some kind of shear that cuts off both ends of the ear.  No idea how they dry them so flat?  These ears in the bulb crates are basically dry enough to shell and bag.  


Here's my corn boards for next years seed.  I really have come to love them for drying my seed ears, but hey are kind of scary to have around the rest of the year, and a pain to store.  I've also gotten rid (mostly) of the boards I made with plain nails.  Galvanized are where its at, plain nails rust and then its a real pain getting some of the ears off the board again without impaling yourself.

[steev]

Got a place to store them against the ceiling?

[RpR]

Of your stacked corn, discounting sweet corn which we ate, half of one of those stacks is the most I have ever harvested of field corn.
Do you have a garage or shed with old style construction where beams hold up the center of the building.
My garage is a cut down horse barn and some years I would put still husked ears in gaps under the beam or lay them sideways where there was a shelf that came from lower lumber being wider than that sitting on it.
Dried real well with no rotting.
I forgot one real long one I had stuck in a hole for three years. Came out just fine.
I had a dozen hay and straw bales stacked in the garage for near seven years and would lay cobs with husk on, on top in a criss cross pattern. Now the bales were old, not green, but corn up there did not rot either, although they were exposed to a lot of air flow.
Ones I put in the house in the unheated porch, there I had some mold.
Now the ears I did not use for decoration, with few exceptions I gave to the squirrels so they were so fat if they tried to get into the garage, they would either get stuck in the holes under the door or die of a heart attack trying to travel that far from their tree under which I threw the cobs.
You know the weather is bad when you throw a fresh cob out and it sits there untouched for several days.

I have another garden up north that I pretty much quit growing corn in It has a newer shed and for years I could put corn in there no problem.
Now, I think it is Chipmunks, if I put corn in there , still with husk on, by late winter I have cobs with husks but no corn.
I have had the garden for thirty plus years and for near thirty of those I could store corn outside no problem but the past five years there are some fat corn thieves out there some where.

[steev]

Altogether, RpR, that's pretty damned funny.

[oxbowfarm]

RpR I don't have any issue with ears rotting with picked corn. If I have a rotten ear in the flint it is either an ear that the birds opened up and then was rained on, or an ear that sat on the ground for a while, due to raccons or deer or lodging. I'm more interested in figuring out a harvesting method for the husks as tamale wrappers ,"hojas". I've found if I leave them on the ear, even if I bring them indoors, the husks will develop mold. There seems to be enough residual moisture in the ear to mold the husks, even though the grain and cob aren't molded. I've not figured out how this is done by Mexicans etc, in the camp who I presume are using their own hojas to make their tamales. It may be that they don't have the problems I have with mold. Corn husked wrapped tamales seem to be more popular in central and Northern Mexico, and I imagine a lot of those places have drier climate than I do in the harvest season. In the wet tropical parts of Mexico they often use banana leaves instead, which is something I'm interested in enough to try growing Ensete ventricosum (Ethiopian hardy banana) for the leaves.

If I tried storing ear corn in my barn the mice and rats would get it all before spring. I have successfully used wire cribs, but this year I'm just trying to dry it down fast in the house in the bulb crates and get it all shelled and bagged before Christmas.

[farmermike]

Here is the entirety of my 2017 grain corn harvest.


My largest corn patch this year was devoted to a dent corn trial. I planted Open Oak Party, Pencil Cob, Trucker's Favorite Yellow and White, Bloody Butcher, Kentucky Rainbow, Silvermine, Tennessee Red Cob, Hickory King, McCormack's Blue Giant, and Virginia Gourdseed. I let them all cross freely. I'm intending to use these primarily for cornmeal and hominy. I'm hopefully doing my first batch of hominy this week.

I decided to work on dent corn because I wanted cornmeal (containing flint & flour), which I add to wheat bread, among other things. And because dents seem to be traditionally used for hominy -- although I know other types of corn work for that as well. Also, dent (or flint/flour) types have a reputation for increased productivity, though that could easily be a myth. I was happy with the productivity of these dent corns, but I haven't grow enough other grain corns for a fair assessment. I don't necessarily plan to continue selecting for dented kernels in particular. I would be just as happy with flint/flour corns with a cap of flint over the top instead of a dent. Interestingly, the Open Oak Party I grew had almost no dented cobs, even though all the seeds I planted were dented. Maybe that had something to do with ripening early during very hot weather (100F+). Unfortunately, I don't think they crossed with any of the other varieties.

The Open Oak Party was about a month earlier than everything else. The Gourdseed was a couple weeks later than the rest, on average. Everything else was pretty much on the same schedule. The overall average DTM ended up around 115 days, which was pretty much what I expected. I didn't really keep track of the varieties while harvesting, and just divided them up roughly by phenotype for the photo (which is why Kentucky Rainbow doesn't have its own group). So, the labels are not entirely accurate.

Most interesting are the crosses onto the Gourdseed. I am fascinated by the gourdseed phenotype, and have ideas of breeding other colors/flavors into it, as well as shortening up its DTM a little. It had excellent resistance to ear worm, which took its toll on all the other varieties (mostly by introducing mold). I wonder how easy it will be to reselect that kernel type out of the crosses. Pencil Cob also has gourdseed shaped kernels in light yellow. It didn't perform great for me, but it may have just been on a patch of poor soil. I didn't fertilize at all; I just tilled a small patch of clay soil that had been fallow for many years (with wild oats, bromes, vetch, etc.). It was very compacted in some places.


Of course, the crosses are easiest to see on the white varieties. As I shell these out, I am setting aside most of the crossed kernels for potential breeding projects.


I'm not planning to grow mixed color varieties, long-term, so I'll probably group the kernels into single colors for future plantings -- although I'm sure it will take many generations to eliminate off-type kernels. I'm okay with that. I'm also planning to try some pure flint and pure flour corns (for polenta and flour/parching) next year so, who knows, I may decide to scrap the whole flint/flour idea. I'm definitely still learning about corn, and how I want to use it -- and I have some chickens that would love to eat the rejects!

[RpR]

How did you plant your different varieties?
Spacing , rows or blocks?
I plant in blocks usually plus or minus six to eight by twelve feet. with close spacing when I plant as many as you did. I only put thirty six inches between blocks and just enough distance between rows so I can crawl through and weed without knocking or bending stalks over.
Thirty plus years ago I tried many variations of close planting rows, and seeds. Although some field corns are now planted extremely close together compared to the standars fifty years ago, I found that any thing less that six inches will only rarely work depending on corn type planted, so I no long do that and anything over ten inches, no matter what some of the on-line seed sellers say, is just wasting space ---- ( Exception, if you plant some of the very large old types and plant the entire block spaced twelve inches to two fee apart, in every direction from a stalk, that can work but only makes sense if your individual stalks get as big as the seller says they can.)
I once planted a very tall dent corn less than four inches apart between seed. I had good fortune and great soil back then but got a huge stand of ten foot plus tall grass with few cobs.
That was also the year I put cocoa bean hulls four inches deep covering the whole block. As I said fantastic plant growth, but back then the bags cost a fourth of what they cost now.

Now some time I put blocks of sweet corn in between field corns and the different tasseling and silking dates stop crossing but I have had all field corn blocks and never had crossing like you did.
Now white crossing with white cannot really simply be seen if both are dent corns but put multi-colored corn next to white and usually get a white cob from the two edge rows with maybe a dozen blue kernels, or red or what ever color was next door.
I wrote earlier that wind that would be necessary for heavy crossing is not a real problem for me but seeing yours , wow, I have never ever had any crossing near that degree.

Of your types, Open Oak is the only one I have never planted, where did you get it?
My gourdseed did very, very well with a lot of large cobs (this was about five years ago plus or minus, but I found out when I laid them out for the squirrels, if I put out different types yellow, white or blue with the gourdseed. The gourdseed would be sitting there for days after the others were removed or stripped.
I also found one year when I planted some GMO field corn, the squirrels are very fond of that either.

[farmermike]

Dec 17, 2017 19:07:54 GMT -5 RpR said:

How did you plant your different varieties?
Spacing , rows or blocks?

I wrote earlier that wind that would be necessary for heavy crossing is not a real problem for me but seeing yours , wow, I have never ever had any crossing near that degree.

Basically, I planted them in blocks of rows, but without any extra seperation between varieties. I think the rows were around 30" apart, and plants thinned to 1 foot spacing. Here is a photo of the field on August 25th.

Those rows are about 15-20 feet long. Each row was split between 2 varieties. Each variety had 2 adjacent rows. I set it up like that to maximize crossing. I also spent some time carrying pollen around the patch a couple times during flowering. On the far right of the patch you can see the 2 rows Open Oak Party tasseling much earlier than anything else.

Dec 17, 2017 19:07:54 GMT -5 RpR said:

Of your types, Open Oak is the only one I have never planted, where did you get it?

Open Oak Party was bred by Adaptive Seeds in Oregon. I bought it from them. They describe it as a "semi-flinty dent type". It is definitely more flinty than anything else in this patch. It has both flint and dent parents in its background. I would highly recommend it, if one is interested in a flint/flour corn.

[oxbowfarm]

I got the flint corn shelled out, left it to freeze outdoors on the porch for a few nights to try and kill any grain moth eggs that might have been laid while it was lying in the bulb crates. We've picked up a severe grain moth infestation from some birdseed, and it doesn't help that I have corn and seeds all over the house.

Ended up fitting all into one overstuffed grain bag, but the thing weighs well over 100 lbs.

[RpR]

Farmer Mike:
Looking at your cobs that are fairly evenly split between white and blue, those look very much like a variety called Garbage Clarage corn which I am assuming is merely a mix of a white type with Blue Clarage and then packaged so that if one plants both the white and blue in same block the mix will remain.
Plant each color in separate blocks and they will breed true.

[steev]

Jan 19, 2018 0:42:21 GMT -5 toomanyirons said:

...

Eloquent, to be sure.

[reed]

toomanyirons, looks to me like you are well on your way to really cool popcorn. Makes me want to grow it again but alas, I'm out of room. In fact I'm considering dropping sweet corn at least for a season in favor of my ornamental/flour field corn. 

[Day]

oxbowfarm - wait... didn't your original post have a picture? All I see is text now. When I quote you and check the BBCode, it looks like there is instructions for an image there... but it's not showing up for me anymore.
Anyone else having this problem?

EDIT: I recently updated my browser security settings, and I think that's what changed. It's now oddly very picky about what images it considers 'safe.' Apparently it doesn't like your internet porn corn XD

[RpR]

Jan 20, 2018 13:12:18 GMT -5 Day said:

oxbowfarm - wait... didn't your original post have a picture? All I see is text now. When I quote you and check the BBCode, it looks like there is instructions for an image there... but it's not showing up for me anymore.
Anyone else having this problem?

EDIT: I recently updated my browser security settings, and I think that's what changed. It's now oddly very picky about what images it considers 'safe.' Apparently it doesn't like your internet porn corn XD

Yes , I lost the pictures also and keep getting a " Server Certificate changed unexpectedly -- connection has been terminanted" warning from my eset security.

[reed]

The pictures display for me using IE but not Chrome. Some of Tom's also do not show with Chrome.