Staggering planting times

[blackthumbmary]

I am planning on growing the two different Heirloom Sweet corns:

Buhl
Hooker's

I am planning to plant the Hooker's first since I am only planting a little of it (160 plants). I was going to plant the Buhls about 3 weeks later to avoid cross politicization. Is my planting schedule adequate to ensure different pollination dates?

Complete isolation is not feasible due to space constraints. I will have one patch with both Hookers and Buhls -the other two plots will only have Bulhs but will be within a 200 ft range of the mixed plot.

I would like to seed save from the Buhls since I will be planting about 1,000+ seeds-understanding that my seed may not be completely pure due to lack of complete isolation. I would only save from the plants in the two plots that do not contain any Hookers.

I have never grown corn before so any additional advice would be welcome..especially from those who have grown Heirloom corn. I live in southern Indiana and have primarily clay soil dressed with aged horse manure (from my own horses).

I am also interested in the corn 'breeding' and preservation projects described on this forum - although they are certainly far beyond my realm of knowledge

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Rather than put a fixed date on how long I am going to wait
between corn plantings, I prefer to base my decision on
how the first crop is developing. (Because in early
spring the corn seed can sit in the ground for weeks
without germinating, so it's easy for both crops to
germinate at the same time even if planted weeks apart.)

Last year my Indian corn patch was 105 feet from my sweet
corn patch. On the outer edge of the sweet corn patch
less than one kernel in 1000 was pollinated by
Indian corn pollen even though both were tasseling at the
same time.

From a mathematical perspective, the concentration of
pollen decreases very rapidly with distance. It can't be
modeled exactly due to so many variables, but as a
first approximation doubling the distance dilutes the pollen
count 4 times.

www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/crops/00707.html
"Corn pollen is relatively heavy and does not travel far. Milkweed plants three feet from Ontario cornfields averaged 180 pollen grains per in2 of milkweed leaf and milkweed plants 15 feet from the field averaged nine pollen grains per in2 of milkweed leaf. "

So if we graph the data from the Colorado State extension article and
combine it with the general geometry of dilution we can make a
graph to estimate how much pollen is hanging around at various distances
from the corn tassel. (see attached graph)

At a distance of 60 feet we would expect something in the neighborhood
of less than one pollen grain per square inch.

Even if that one grain does manage to travel the distance, it is competing
with the thousands or millions of pollen grains that are being
generated locally.

The corn on the edge of the patch acts as a barrier to the travel of
pollen, and as a pollen trap, and as a diluter of stray pollen, so if it
was me, I would plant the buhl corn in a block, and not save the
seed from the outermost row.

In my own garden I would be very delighted with a 200 foot isolation
distance especially if a time isolation was also practiced.

Regards,
Joseph

Attachments:

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I am excited about two of the varieties for my
sweet corn breeding program, because I bought
Indian corn seed, but when the seeds arrived they
contained about 3% sweet corn kernels...

So I shouted for joy! and immediately made large
purchases of both varieties so that I could pick out
enough sweet corn seeds for my project.

I know the grower of one of the varieties and he
has grown it on his farm for many years. A small
amount of sweet corn pollen has become incorporated
into his population over the years. As far as I am
concerned that is the best thing that could have
happened...

Regards,
Joseph

[blackthumbmary]

Joseph - Thanks for the advice and sharing your experiences on seed saving when growing multiple varieties. I am planning on planting my corn in blocks so I will be careful not to save any seeds from the 'buffer' rows. I will also wait for the Hooker's corn to germinate before planting the Buhl's instead of simply relying on a fixed time ratio.

Regarding the Indian corn that had some sweet corn kernels - what variety of Indian corn did you order? Are you trying to create a sweet Indian corn variety?

I would also be interested in hearing more about your sweet corn breeding program. Do you breed a specific type - Heirloom/open pollinated versus hybrid/non open pollinated?

Thanks again for your very informative response.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 3, 2010 22:59:02 GMT -5 blackthumbmary said:

Regarding the Indian corn that had some sweet corn kernels - what variety of Indian corn did you order? Are you trying to create a sweet Indian corn variety?

I would also be interested in hearing more about your sweet corn breeding program. Do you breed a specific type - Heirloom/open pollinated versus hybrid/non open pollinated?

I purchased around 30 varieties of Indian corn to be used as
one parent in a multi-colored sugary enhanced
sweet corn breeding program. I guess if I were to put a
name on what I am creating it would be
'open pollinated adaptavar landrace'.

One of the unnamed
varieties has been maintained for years by a Missouri farmer who
described it something like "very diverse, new genetics
added every year". I call it by the name of the farmer.
I was very hyped when I found
sweet corn seed in the mix.
He says it grows on the Indian corn cobs, a few kernels
on a few cobs.

The other sweet corn I found on Indian corn cobs was at
a grocery store... I was admiring the decorative Indian
corn, and noticed that there was a cob here and there
that had an occasional sweet corn kernel on it. So I bought
every package that had sweet corn kernels in it for weeks
until I got enough for my project. Pricey way to get seed,
but it seems like the perfect candidate for my project.

Since then, I have become aware of other sweet corn
breeding programs such as Astronomy Domini, and
Lupine Knoll Farm, and Long Island Seed project, so I am
devoting more effort to backcrossing, growing out,
and selecting the F1/F2 seed
from these programs, and am devoting less space
to the Indian corns, though I will still be including
something like 20 varieties of Indian corn in my
project this year.

The other breeding programs have already incorporated
many of the varieties that I was planning on using
such as Painted Mountain, Rainbow Inca, Hookers,
Black Aztec, etc.

I have 6 isolated gardens/fields in which to conduct
breeding projects. So many projects so few gardens.

I sure appreciate the work and seeds from the other breeders.

Regards,
Joseph

[mortality]

Apr 4, 2010 3:01:40 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

The other sweet corn I found on Indian corn cobs was at
a grocery store... I was admiring the decorative Indian
corn, and noticed that there was a cob here and there
that had an occasional sweet corn kernel on it. So I bought
every package that had sweet corn kernels in it for weeks
until I got enough for my project. Pricey way to get seed,
but it seems like the perfect candidate for my project.

Please excuse my ignorance, but how could you tell which were the sweet kernels?

[blueadzuki]

Apr 4, 2010 3:01:40 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Apr 3, 2010 22:59:02 GMT -5 blackthumbmary said:

The other sweet corn I found on Indian corn cobs was at
a grocery store... I was admiring the decorative Indian
corn, and noticed that there was a cob here and there
that had an occasional sweet corn kernel on it. So I bought
every package that had sweet corn kernels in it for weeks
until I got enough for my project. Pricey way to get seed,
but it seems like the perfect candidate for my project.

That's what I did a lot as well except substitute "farmer's markets/stand for grocery store (though I have found a few there too) I cannot resist picking up any cobs of Indian that I see a crinkly kernel or two on, as well as any other interesting kernels (in the fall indiand corn selling season, me coming home with 20-30 cobs a week is not all that unusual, though 10-15 is more normal) I've filled a pint bottle up to the top with the "sweet indians" I've picked off. Doing all this has netted me a few really nice mixed gene kernels (my two biggest sweet prizes (in case you didn't read the previos thread I mentione dit on) are some that have the parent cobs trait for making kernels with blue polka dots and a dozen or so from a really weird corn that appears to be a chinmarked version of Peruvian Cancha de Monatans (so the kernels have sweet genes, chinmaking genes and genes for the cancha odd giant "candle flame" shape kernels (what I belive is called "rice" if the corn was a popcorn) and wide squat cob shape of its Cancha side.)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 4, 2010 6:21:05 GMT -5 mortality said:

how could you tell which were the sweet kernels?

Flour corn, flint corn, and popcorn have smooth round kernels.
Sweet corn has wrinkled kernels.

blueadzuki: What a great seed collecting method. I searched
the farmers markets here as well, but alas didn't find any
sweetcorn treasures.

Regards,
Joseph

[blueadzuki]

Apr 4, 2010 12:57:16 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Apr 4, 2010 6:21:05 GMT -5 mortality said:

\
blueadzuki: What a great seed collecting method. I searched
the farmers markets here as well, but alas didn't find any
sweetcorn treasures.

Regards,
Joseph

It helps a bit to select a big farmer's market with both fairly stiff interventdor competition and fairly strict rules about what the vendors can sell. Basically you get the best results (spurise-wise) from farmers markets sellers who have the need to grow and sell both vegetable (corn on the cob) corn and oramental Indian corn and really don't have enough land to keep the plants, and not enough stock to toss out the "imperfect" (I live in train distance of NYC so I tend to use Union Sqaure and Dag Plaza) as far apart as they should. Even when I find Indaion sweets at supermarkets it's usally at ones that are little mom-and pop places, sincemost of the big chain places tend to buy thier Indian corn from big agicultural concerns who have sufficient land and orders to focus on Indian corn alone and to toss out a lot of the field edge "errors".

[mortality]

Apr 4, 2010 12:57:16 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Flour corn, flint corn, and popcorn have smooth round kernels.
Sweet corn has wrinkled kernels.

Regards,
Joseph

Thanks very much, definitely something to look out for from the Painted Mountain corn i'm going to try and grow this year
Anything else I should look out for?