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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 8, 2018 7:39:09 GMT -5
toomanyirons I think you are over-emphasizing to yourself that hybrid corns/inbred lines are "feeble". That idea comes from the classic explanation of hybrid corn, which used very "feeble" inbred lines to produce the resulting hybrids. The "feebleness" doesn't say anything specific about the genetic quality of the plant, it is simply a result of inbreeding depression in a crop that HATES to be inbred. Modern inbred lines are pretty much not "feeble" the way they were a century ago. They've selected and improved the inbreds over many generations to the point where they are very nice strong corn plants not visibly different in vigor and strength from many OP varieties. I could make an argument that many OP varieties are much more "feeble" than the inbred lines due to them being maintained improperly and poorly selected. There are lots of OP varieties for sale on the home gardener market that are basically randomly selected. cough cough Glass Gem cough cough At least with an inbred line you know they've been actively maintianing it and selecting it. The main issue with modern inbreds and/or hybrids is what traits are they selecting for, and do those match your goal? I don't know exactly what kind of corn project you want to do, but it sounded like a popcorn project? I'd have absolutely zero hesitation using a modern non-GMO hybrid as part of a popcorn breeding project. It will definitely NOT give you "feeble" genetics.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 7, 2018 16:46:05 GMT -5
My answers would be
#1 C #2 If the inbred line had genetic weakness/inbreeding depression due to stacked homozygous deleterious alleles, then potentially those alleles would become a problem if you inbred the offspring to the point where they were homozygous again. But thats not normally how most regular people maintain OP varieties. You maintain sufficient genetic diveristy and population sizes to prevent inbreeding depression to that level. creating highly homozygous inbred lines is the work of specialist corn breeders. If you don't inbreed them then there's nothing inherent in using an inbred as a parent that will make your work intrinsically weakened.
#3 I don't understand the quesiton exactly. How could it cause problems? Its just corn. As long as it isn't GMO/patented genetics, then ??
I think there is definitely value in using modern breeding material to the extent that it is available. Many modern inbred lines are GMO and proprietary, but many are also available publicly. Modern inbred lines are very different than they were in the early days of hybrid seed production. The continued selection has removed huge numbers of deleterious alleles. Many of the modern inbred lines of Cornbelt Dent are higher yielding than the early HYBRIDS ever were. The selection of many of those lines has created some amazing phenotypes. I frequently drive by a few fields of corn that never got harvested and most of it is still standing tall in February. Thats pure product of hundreds of generations of selection for stalk strength.
As far as popcorn goes, I don't know much about what is available, but I'd recommend talking to Frank Kutka.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 7, 2018 15:21:58 GMT -5
My Oxbow White Flour Grex is basically built on a foundation mix of several strains of Tuscarora/Cherokee White Flour with a significant admixture of Cargill North Temperate Zone Coroico added in for its humidity/fungal/rot resistance as well as its outstanding resistance to Norhern Leaf Blight. I have been deliberately selecting AWAY from 8-row simply because many of the Native American cultures hold these corns as sacred, and I don't want to create a mixture/composite/grex that might be mistaken for one, out of respect. At various times I've also included CNTZ Carribbean, CNTZ Tuxpeño, Schroeder Strain Hickory King, and I'm currently actively trying to add in genetics from Zapalote Chico. Grin accession that are included in my grex and which I found useful that are from this Easter White Flour group include Ames 2757, NSL 202125, Ames 22650, Ames 24975Rowen White at Sierra Seeds sells a very good strain of Tuscarora/Irroquois White Flour, Southern Exposure has a really nice (although too long season for me) strain of Cherokee WF.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 7, 2018 12:27:18 GMT -5
esoteric_agriculture speaks truth, although there are strains of 6-Nations White Flour from Canada which are very short, and very short season (available through GRIN). But the 8-row Eastern White flour corn is a spectrum of quite clearly related strains that are more similar than they are different. Generally they are mostly white, 8-10 row and are strongly single stalked/low tillering with ears held well up off the ground. The other big quality they share is a very excellent resistance to ear and stalk rots. Most of them are fairly susceptible to Northern Leaf Blight and Common Rust, but that's generally true of every Native American 8-row corn I've ever grown. For flour corns grown in a humid climate ie anywhere east of the dry-line in North America, they are much superior to western/southwestern flour corns like Painted Mtn.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 2, 2018 22:22:54 GMT -5
I've interacted with him before, he does grow a lot of corn. He's got this system where he grows lots of varieties in a greenhouse and hand pollinates. It seems counterintuitive to me, and I questioned how he was avoiding inbreeding, but he feels that his family has figured out a good system to avoid it. I personally like to grow large amts of corn outside so I can eat some of it. He's definitely wrong about waxy corn, but I probably believe some incorrect things about corn as well? Its a really pretty blog he's got there.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 2, 2018 19:03:39 GMT -5
Waxy is very different from sweet corn. Waxy corn stores all its carbohydrate as amylopectin instead of regular starch. It is used in East Asia as a fresh vegetable at the sweetcorn stage I believe, but the genes that make sweetcorn sweet and waxy corn waxy are completely different, and do completely different things.
I'd say calling pod corn a separate type vs a type of popcorn is somewhat hard to support.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 2, 2018 12:44:07 GMT -5
I'm not prepared to call this a cold winter or a mild one. Its a damn erratic winter. We've had many days below 0 deg F, but then we've had several instances were it gets mild and in the 40 deg F range. So no snow accumulation to speak of, lots of ice. Its been a very icy winter so far as all the paths where I habitually go around to the sheds, barn, and fields get packed with snow which then converts to ice. Pain in the neck and I've put my slip-on ice grippers on my boots. Most years I don't need them.
Yesterday it was t-shirt weather in the 40s and sunny. Today it was 0 deg F this morning and we've got 2 inches of powder snow and below 0 wind chill. They are calling for rain again by Wednesday. I don't know how this will affect the orchards, but I expect it will be a lousy sugaring season,
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 1, 2018 15:03:56 GMT -5
seedsaver091011 my inlaws are Azorean, some here in the US and lots still back on San Miguel. I'd say that if they are growing a couve that actually has a variety name then they grew it from purchased seed. When my mother-in-law talks about vegetables they grew when she was a kid she doesn't ever talk about specific varieties names. My impression of village agriculture that is still going on to some extent is that its pretty landracy. I know when my mother-in-law was growing up they grew their own seed, and maintained their own varieites, it was a very subsistence agriculture lifestyle. But they didn't have names for stuff like "bloody butcher" or whatever. They grew two different colors of corn, a yellow and a white, and they used different fields for each and kept them separate. They had multiple different types of sweet potato and potato, but she just talks about them by color or size, not by name. Also russian kale, kale, collards, and similar greens like Senposai (which I'm sure they didn't have when she was a kid) she just calls them "couves".
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 1, 2018 8:13:12 GMT -5
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 31, 2018 9:35:17 GMT -5
The down side with grafting will be we wont be able to replicate the dwarfism that this bush shows You never know until you try? Definitely the rootstock influences the topgrowth in apples and many orchard fruits, but thats usually using a dwarfing rootstock which is restricting the growth. I'm not aware of ANY examples of grafting a natural dwarf scion onto a "standard" rootstock. The closest thing I'm familiar with is interstem grafting where a piece of dwarfing interstem is grafted in between a vigorous rootstock and the scion. I think there are some issues with the rootstock suckering, trying to push past the restriction of the interstem (in a sense). I think it might be a really interesting thing to attempt.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 29, 2018 13:10:29 GMT -5
richardw I checked his YT channel and website, and it turns out h e wrote a pretty good article about propagating Mullberries. Big takeaway idea was that he's found hardwood cuttings to be really low percentage, and that "Softwood cuttings have been very successful for me since I built an intermittent mist system." Speaking from my own personal experience, misting systems are actually really easy to set up now that they have such inexpensive solar powered timers available. They are well worth it for all kinds of propagation tasks. He does say that some mulberry varieties never seem to root for him. But he says that grafting is very doable as well. So that might be a route to try if you can't get the bugger to root in mister.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 29, 2018 10:30:49 GMT -5
waynem, I'm not sure, If I recall it was part of the batch of seeds from Joseph Simcox "explorer series" or whatever. I don't even look at Baker Creek anymore, Morado grown in New Mexico for 20 years sounds like a much better bet than the stuff I grew, definitely the morado I had didn't have any photoperiod adaptation at all. Certainly was not 100 day corn. If you want to take the gamble, frankly if Baker Creek said the sky was blue, I'd go outside and double check.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 29, 2018 10:25:50 GMT -5
Mulberries are easiest to propagate from softwood I'm pretty sure. My friend takes cuttings from a couple of fairly prolific mulberries that are landscaping in the parking lot of our farmer's market, he climbs up to the top of the tree to get cuttings that will root.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 29, 2018 10:19:42 GMT -5
We had a huge mound of dirt with twisted metal bars poking out of it at all angles on the back side of the barn, kind of off to the side. It mystified me till a neighbor told me there had been another barn attached at right angles back in the day, you can see the roof line on the north end of the existing barn still. The big mound was formerly a board silo and all the metal were the silo staves. It seems like they had a bunch of dirt in the silo when it was abandoned, the mound was definitely not made of composted silage. I've salvaged most of the staves now, they are a really nice 5/8ths round bar once you cut off the threaded ends and the connector brackets, which are I think made of cast iron, but they're a big dirt and rust lump now. I've forged most of the tongs I've made out of these old silo staves.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 29, 2018 10:06:34 GMT -5
reed I hope it works out well for you. We definitely have cabbage whites, but they aren't a super serious problem with regard to brassica growing IMO. Although they do tend to jack up cabbage if you don't use rowcover. I don't typically grow much cabbage, enough for us for a few batches of kraut. Cabbage is not a profitable crop for a market garden in my opinion, people expect it to be cheap and act like you are ripping them off when you are charging a break even price. Similar to sweet corn. For us, the serious brassica pests are flea beetles and swede midge.
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