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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 14, 2014 3:23:26 GMT -5
If you put a hard-shell squash into a clean trash-bag, you can throw that sucker down on a hard surface and not lose a bit of goodness, neither seed nor flesh, while perhaps releasing a bit of anger. If I drop the squash from head high or throw it down on the concrete, the squash flies into piece, some of the seeds scatter, and the broken halves may land flesh down and have to be cleaned. If I drop from just the right height, the shell cracks completely around the middle, as does the meat, and the two halves hang nicely together by the seed debris, all the broken surfaces staying clean and the seeds staying inside. So I drop from waist high initially. If that isn't high enough, I drop again from a couple feet higher.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 14, 2014 3:14:53 GMT -5
Everyone--What is your experience with the inheritance of row number and cob size and width in crosses?
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 12, 2014 9:28:51 GMT -5
Blueadzuki-I only said you could use corn of many (including very heterogeneous mixed types) for something. Not necessarily for what you would prefer. Good popcorn has a set of characteristics that aren't easy to recover if you cross to non-popcorn types. Popcorn has to have a certain kind of endosperm and a certain very tough skin that holds the steam in until the kernel explodes. If you cross a popcorn to a non popcorn, recovering that combination might not be easy. However, you can still use what you get up for wet-batter cornbread or nixtamalize. But there are lots of easier ways to get corn for those purposes than using a popcorn, of course.
I like polenta a lot. The very pure flint varieties take 3 volumes of water per volume of corn, so are pretty concentrated food, and they cook completely with 7 minutes of simmering with stirring and 45 minutes of sitting. That's very easy prep, and requires nothing more than the ability to boil water. Less pure flints or dents require more water per volume of meal, and don't really taste completely cooked unless they are both boiled forever and then baked. So to have flints that make great polenta, I make crosses only among pure flint types. If I crossed to a dent or flour, I doubt I'd ever be able to get back flint type pure enough to fix with just 7 minutes of labor. And I'm not much for screening to separate out the flinty part of a mixed type for polenta or boiling with stirring 45 minutes and then baking. So I cheerfully make crosses among pure flint types that I have checked out as working in my polenta recipe. But I don't cross a flint to anything other than another flint. If your primary use is wet-batter cornbread only and you don't care about polenta, though, you could cross a flint to a dent or flour and make a dent that would probably be higher yielding than my pure flints. (And if you used a pure color dent or flour and a pericarp-variable aleurone-fixed flint, you could make a dent that would have ears of pure colors that could be sorted to give different flavors.)
I was being simplistic, however, to say you can make wet-batter cornbread from any corn. You can, but how the cornbread tastes depends very much on the corn used. And some tastes awful. I bred Magic Manna because I liked the agronomical characteristics of Painted Mountain, but made into cornbread it tastes pretty much like mud. I checked around here, and while many people grew PM, they just sold it or used it as ornamental corn. They either didn't eat it at all, or they ate it mixed into recipes that diluted it a lot with wheat flour or commercial cornmeal. My cornbread is made just from the corn. I asked Dave Christienson if he ate Painted Mountain, and he does, but not as cornbread. He nixtamalizes it. So far as I know, every corn tastes fine nixtamalized. That process removes the skins and imposes its own flavors on endosperm. I don't usually nixtamalize. I consider it just too much work. And the main thing I want from corn was bread and other baked goods. (And polenta for the flints.) So I bred something out of PM that better fit my needs.
I notice that Johnny's has now separated their field corns into culinary and ornamental types, and both Painted Mountain and Earth Tones Dent are listed as ornamentals. (To my tastes, Earth Tones Dent also tastes like mud.) Presumably the Johnny's classification is in recognition of the fact that these corns make pretty foul cornbread. However, they undoubtedly do fine nixtamalized, so are not nonculinary if that is your ordinary use.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 21:14:18 GMT -5
Carol Deppe - I guess that I'll have to try Flat White Boer next year and see how they turn out in my climate. About the hardness or hubbard skin and their "resistance" to being chewed on - do the smaller hubbard varieties have that same trait as the larger ones? Starting next year I'll be growing all of my large vining crops in an area that isn't fenced, and I don't want to many of my squashes going to the deer. As far as I know, all the Hubbards have a hard woody shell. I haven't tried them all. But I suspect that's part of the definition. I've sometimes had major problems with deer in the Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead plantings. They will walk by everything else and take multiple big bites our of the SMs. As long as they don't bite all the way into the seed cavity, the bite spots generally heal, and the squash can still be used. But they need to be used first, as they don't store as long as the unblemished fruits. Fortunately, there are few deer where I am currently planting them. If I had lots of hail, deer, and rodents I think I would start trialing every hard-shelled squash around. And of course breeding new ones of my own.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 21:05:10 GMT -5
Walk, have you tried our Australian maximas: Queensland Blue and Triamble? They store really well, a year or more but the QB has such a hard skin that many people use a hatchet to get into them. Maybe the rodents woudn't touch them. The way I open a hard-shelled squash (that is, one with an actual woody shell, like Blue Hubbard, for example) is to just drop it on the driveway. If you drop it from just the right height it splits cleanly in two with the halves held together with a little bit of the seedy debris. And the seeds stay inside ready for removal and saving. So I drop from waist high initially, and if that doesn't work, go higher until the squash breaks. To open big squash with thick leathery skins, like Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead I use a 2-hand katana machete I bought from Cold Steel. It has a 2-foot long blade with a flat (not curved) sharp edge (so it goes all the way through a squash). I just lay the knife on the squash so as to divide it into two even pieces and pound it with a rubber mallet. That way I can divide the squash into two nice even pieces with just one knife cut. I think any squash with a woody shell would be less vulnerable to rodents. By the time the squash develops much sweetness, it is harder to get in to.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 20:40:12 GMT -5
If I understand it right I could for example check the endosperm color and only plant say white ones and probably increase the number of white ones in the next generation BUT NOT end up exclusively with white. At least not for several more generations, if then. I want to do like Joseph and make a landrace with as much diversity as possible even though I suspect the more diversity I start with the more generations it will take to select out the traits I want. However, I imagine Mother Nature will help on that so I won't have to do it all myself. I also want to do like Carol and select very specifically, it just may be a while till I can do that. Her Magic Manna for example has no color except paricarp and she made it from Painted Mountain. I dissected some Painted Mountain and there is plenty of non-paricarp color. It must have taken a lot of patience and know how to get rid if it.
Fortunately varieties don't have to be perfect. And when you mass select, lingering recessive genes and occasional off-types are part of the trade-offs as the hidden recessives find each other occasionally. You can inbreed to identify unwanted recessives and eliminate them completely, but inbreeding really costs you in vigor when it comes to developing new op corns. And keep in mind that your corn variety is likely to start doing mostly what you want pretty fast. After that, it's just a matter of selecting the types you want by saving seed only from them. With corn, it's pretty much all useful for something. Wet-batter cornbread or nixtamalizing if nothing else. And you can define things permissively. With the Pancake White Manna and the Brown Gravy Manna I'm introducing this year, I'm just defining the varieties as 1/2 to 2/3 the indicated color, with the rest being the other colors. I sort of like the idea of leaving a good bit of the color variation still in these lines, just running the percentages up for people who have preferred uses. But it's partly practical. If I defined either of these varieties as being, say, 99% pure for the relevant color, it would take me a decade to get that by mass selection. Or longer, given that the pericarp colors are maternal. And I figure most people who want mostly pancakes, for example, would probably still want a little of other things as well as the colored ears for their beauty in displays.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 20:19:25 GMT -5
So it looks like, from reading this thread, that we should plant some Cascade Ruby-Gold Flint next year instead of Roy's Calais as it sounds like an improvement in many ways - deeper yellow interior color and more productive while maturing as early. I'm assuming that the deeper yellow color means more beta carotene? I was also wondering if it's possible to eat this corn in the "green" phase? Yes, Cascade Ruby-Gold has a richer interior gold color. It's also more productive, has better husk coverage, bigger ears (8-12 rows, grain-bearing part up to 10 inches rather than about 8 inches), and has more colors. I don't know whether the deeper yellow color is more beta carotene or some other pigment. I bred for that deeper interior color (which I got from the 'Byron flint parent') partly because I wanted the yellow ears to be brighter and more beautiful. But in addition, every time I've run into that deeper colored yellow-gold-orange interior color in a flint corn, it has been associated with a deeper, richer, more complex flavor. The same is true of the yellow-gold ears of CRG compared with the yellow ears of Roy's Calais. There is an added issue leading to the washed out color of the yellow ears in Calais. The clear pericarp, where it is clear, is actually not clear. It is translucent rather than transparent. I.e. cloudy. This in addition to the pale yellow interior flint color makes the yellow ears appear pale and washed out. I've selected against the cloudy pericarp, but there is still a lot of it in CRG. I'm still improving the variety year by year. The photos of CRG round and about the internet are always of just the 8-row ears. Apparently because people think it should have 8 rows because both parents did. But when you cross a pencil cobbed 8-row variety to a full cob 8-row variety you get 8-12 rows in the F2. The 12-row ears dry just as fast as the 8-row as long as the overall ear size is medium thin. I've allowed the variety to vary for 8-12 rows because that allows it to develop more easily into having larger ears in the future. I don't know how it tastes in the green stage, as I design and participate in the planting and harvests and take the crop and do all the selecting, but don't grow it on my own place. I have a huge pile of CRG downstairs but haven't photographed it yet. When I've photographed it, I'll post the pics here. As for using being able to recognize crosses in both directions to isolate from a black sweet corn, neither CRG or Calais would work. You could see the crosses of either onto the sweet corn. But not the other direction. Black does not always show up when heterozygous even in crosses to white or yellow varieties. And it certain isn't going to show up most of the time on ears with a colored pericarp on top. Cascade Creamcap is a sister variety to Cascade Ruby-Gold. It is even more productive than CRG and has somewhat bigger ears. It has the mild neutral flavor typical of Rhode Island Whitecap that makes it ideal for situations in which you want a neutral flavor. To go with gourmet cheese, or smoked salmon, or to make sandwiches. Because you don't want yellow endosperm in CC or white in the CRG, I recommend giving CC and CRG a little distance. 50' should be plenty. Occasional crosses won't matter because the lines were developed from the same lot of breeding material. (I first ran the gene frequency of some occasional contaminating whites in the original material up to about 20% to avoid genetically bottlenecking when I selected white kernels. Then pulled both CC and CRG out of that material.) CC has a little yellow endosperm contamination and an occasional red pericarp ear in it anyway. And CRG has a little white endosperm in it. (I continue selecting against the off types in each.) So occasional contaminating crosses between them don't introduce any problems that aren't already there. If Midnight Snack has yellow endosperm, then you could grow it with Cascade Creamcap flint and see the crosses in both directions. But if Midnight Snack has white or mixed color endsperms it wouldn't work.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 13:34:30 GMT -5
Walk, moist or dry flesh for the Flat White Boer? Blackox, back when I grew Flat White Boer it was very moist fleshed, and didn't keep well. But is was fine-grained, had a different distinct flavor, and was really delicious. To be workable for most of us, we need someone to get a good line of it and cross it to something drier that stores better and go from there.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 13:31:15 GMT -5
Flowerweaver, hard-shelled squash are less vulnerable to rodents than the leathery skinned types. If I had a huge rodent problem I'd grow Hubbards instead of my Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead. Or I'd cross the too and try to pull out something with the Hubbard hard shell and the SM-OH thick flesh.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 13:23:01 GMT -5
I was wondering if anyone knows if the Sweet Meat squash sold by Fedco is the same as the Sweet Meat - Oregon Homestead squash offered by Fertile Valley Seeds? Last year we grew the Fedco Sweet Meat and the flavor was quite bland - about like the Flat White Boer we grew this year. Even though the Uncle Dave's and Brown Seeded Buttercup have outstanding flavor, I would still like to find a variety that could match them AND be a good keeper too, as is the supposed to be the case with the Sweet Meat. Walk, the Sweet Meat sold by Fedco is not 'Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead'. I think everyone who is selling it is selling it by its full name. Nichols Garden Nursery is also a good source, and they sell exactly the same seed I sell since I wholesale it to them. Adaptive Seeds and Bountiful Gardens also sell it from their own growouts. (Both pay me a voluntary royalty. Nice of them, since they didn't have to, since it is a fully public domain release.) I don't think the standard commercial Sweet Meat is worth growing any more. Hearing that your Flat White Boer was bland is a disappointment. I grew it decades ago, and at that point it was very sweet with a powerful distinctive flavor quite different from any other squash. You might try getting it from some other source and seeing if it is better. Yes, 'Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead is a great keeper. I expect them all to last through spring, just getting sweeter and more intensely flavored the whole time. Occasional ones have even lasted two years, but beyond about April the attrition rate goes way up.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 20:31:06 GMT -5
jondear--I don't know whether commercial creamed corn is made with special varieties. My understanding of the process is that the kernels of the cooked ears are scored and smashed so that the inside of the kernels comes out leaving the skins behind. There are devices available at old-fashioned supply places for doing it. (Lehman's, maybe?). Seems like it would work for any kind of sweet corn.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 20:26:15 GMT -5
blueadzuki-- The sweet corn brings some flint character into the cross with a flour corn, so the situation is not totally impossible. So in that cross you will find plenty of kernels that look nearly empty, but there will be some with more flint in them. So if you do such a cross, you can recover a workable sweet corn. You just ignore the empty kernels and choose the ones that are wrinkled but fatter than the rest. Basically you get both the sweet gene and the flint/dent background type from the sweet corn.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 20:17:42 GMT -5
Reed, yes, that's all exactly correct. The kernels from a brown ear of Magic Manna could give you any of the colors typical of the variety. The ear is brown because the mother plant's genes produced the pericarps for all the kernels on her ears. But the individual kernels may or may not have inherited the gene for brown pericarp from the mother; the mother might have been heterozygous. And the different kernels will have been pollinated by various nearby plants.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 2:58:46 GMT -5
Jondear--If you have a cross of sh2 and su sweet corns, you'll get field corn. Then both segregate out. And if you keep the wrinkled kernels and grow those you keep getting a mix of field and sweet. I've run into this situation when trying to breed sweet corn from sweet contamination in field varieties. Too often, there is more than one kind of gene for "sweet" involved.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 2:49:15 GMT -5
Reed--It doesn't matter whether your sweet corn and field corn have the similar genetic background since you are not trying to combine the sweet and field into sister lines. (And that combination would defeat the concept of sister lines, because crosses between them screw up the other.) You aren't creating sister lines, you're just using rigging the genetics to allow you to grow two varieties and keep them pure even if they have the same or overlapping pollination windows. I do that sort of thing all the time. My grower who grew Cascade Creamcap Flint for me also grew 'True Gold' Sweet corn. The latter is much later. Even so, there was pollination overlap, but the grower had eaten sweet corn and take flint for his home use from where the blocks came together. But in addition, the crosses between the varieties were 100% easy to identify and screen out.
For it to work, you need each variety to have some recessive that will be overridden and be an indicator of crosses to the other variety. So any white field corn and any yellow sweet corn will work. Crosses of either are obvious on the other. so the pairs you mentioned involving a white field corn and a yellow sweet (or red pericarp over a yellow sweet) would work. But not black sweet, unless it was over yellow endosperm. (heterozgous black isn't always apparent).
The white sweet corns wouldn't work, because a cross of white onto a white field ear isn't necessarily apparent. Red pericarp isn't a useful indicator, since it is maternal tissue and doesn't reflect the genetics of the seed, thus doesn't indicate crossing.
I bred Magic Manna (and Pancake White Manna) from Painted Mountain by gentle mass selection, keeping the numbers high so as to maintain all the heterogeneity, resilience, and agronomic virtues Dave Christiansen put into that variety, but simply eliminated the variability for aleurone color. So it should grow anywhere Painted Mountain grows. The Pancake White will have up to about a third ears of other (solid) colors, however, you can just eat those too.
But actually, any white field corn would do and would allow you to recognize the crosses in both directions when grown next to a yellow-endosperm sweet. You say you would like a bit more crunch that flour corn has. So you might prefer a dent. You could make a helluva white dent, I'll betcha, by crossing Pancake White Manna and Cascade Creamcap. You could plant both in alternating rows, detassel one of them, then grow out and stabilize the hybrid by mass selection and create your own very early white dent. Furthermore, you can do that with the "white side" of your field while growing the yellow sweet corn too.
It's often easier to keep varieties pure by rigging things so you recognize hybrids rather than have to avoid them. For example, if one bean has purple plants and one green, the hybrid will usually have pink plants. This means you can eliminate any crosses before they start to flower. If you are selling the seed it doesn't work, because some is crossed. But if it's for your own purposes, it works just fine because you know to watch for and cull the hybrids.
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