corn experiments 2010

[johno]

I'm growing three varieties of corn presently: Goliath silage corn, Astronomy Domine sweet corn - a work-in-progress in itself, and Country Gentleman shoepeg corn, also a sweet corn. I want to increase ear size of AD with genes from Goliath, and I want to create a multi-colored shoepeg corn for my sister. They are planted three rows wide, one of each, in blocks separated by one week each to account for different maturity rates. Astronomy Domine is planted in the middle rows, and will be used as the pollen parent. I may also do some reverse crossing, with AD as the recipient. Ideas?

Photo of the first bed
i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10/johnosgarden/100_0434-1.jpg

[bunkie]

beautiful pics johno! you are way ahead of us here. you're weather must be really cooperating to have the corn look that good! we're pretty cold and wet so far. very unusual for us.

[raymondo]

Yes, good looking corn patch there.

Is three weeks spread in sowing generally enough to cover variations in flowering times? I have no idea about this but will have to do something similar for my corn breeding project I guess. I know nothing about the maturity profile of the corns I'll be using so it will be trial and error, hopefully not too much of the latter!

[johno]

I could probably round up the DTMs for the shoepeg corn and Astronomy Domine (a range, at least), but I don't know the 'days to maturity' for Goliath. I hope the four once-a-week plantings will cover it. I think it will. I think three weeks would catch most of the ones I'd be working with.

Two of the ADs from the first sowing started tasseling at least a week ago. This morning I found that those two now have silks formed and several others in that row are shedding pollen. The oldest Goliath row is at least eye level to me, the tallest around 6'-ish.

The last bed I sowed didn't germinate quite so well in general. The weirdest thing happened specifically with the AD row in the middle. About 25% of the way down the row, I got a wild hair and decided to select the kernals visually - up to that point it was random. Almost none of the ones I picked based on size or color or whatever made them look good to me germinated. Lesson learned...

Here's a pic from one end of the area:
i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10/johnosgarden/100_0495.jpg

Silk:
i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10/johnosgarden/100_0485.jpg

Tassels:
i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10/johnosgarden/100_0486.jpg

[johno]

Raymondo, after my last reply, you had me second-guessing myself. I looked up Goliath in the Sandhill catalog, and there was the DTM, after all. 128 days! I got pretty worried at that point. It took me a while to shift my thinking - sweet corn is 'mature' at the milk stage, dent corn is 'mature' when it's dry. That was some relief, but I was still unsure of the overlap in tasseling/silking times. To my relief, Goliath and Coutry Gentleman are both starting to tassel now in the oldest bed, and about half the Astronomy Domine has yet to do so. So, as far as that scare goes, I'm in the clear. Now the hand breeding work begins...

[johno]

Detasseling daily now. Astronomy Domine is becoming more uniform in it's developmental characteristics. Below is a photo showing the simplicity of the breeding process in this experiment. Country Gentleman (the left row) and Goliath (right row) are detassled, leaving Astronomy Domine as the sole provider of pollen to all three varieties. Silks of all three varieties are showered with pollen from the center row. What I learned so far is that Astronomy Domine is a week or so earlier than the other two and thus should have been planted a week later than the mother plants. As it stands, the overlap of productive tassels and receptive silks in the same row is not perfectly timed.

[johno]

It's been raining buckets, mornings, afternoons and overnights, for days. I've been able to check on the garden late mornings through early afternoons between rains. I'm worried all the pollen is being washed away, so I started tapping all the (Astronomy Domine) tassels over a paper plate to collect what pollen I can. Then I go to new silks, trim them down to the size of a dime, and dab the mixed pollen on with my fingertip.

[johno]

So, I informed my wife I was going outside for a while to pollinate corn. When I came back in, she asked, "Finished pollinating already?" To which I replied, "Yeah. It doesn't take long." And she said, "It never does..."

No rain today, nice and hot. The corn produced tons of pollen as I shook each tassel over the paper plate. But to an allergy sufferer, there is a price to pay for such success:
i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10/johnosgarden/100_0653-1-1.jpg

[mnjrutherford]

I think I like your wife!

[johno]

Yesterday I pollinated some of the last planting of Astronomy Domine with Country Gentleman, and some with Goliath. This time I tagged them - the reverse crosses (with AD as the pollen parent) should be pretty obvious (anything not white is crossed). The previous (3rd) planting I left alone, so I'd have tassels to work with. So that bed pretty much crossed freely, although the AD had already done its thing there. Not too sure what to do with that seed (Gol x CG and CG x Gol)...

Next year I can plant the Goliath x AD and AD x Goliath together inside a block of AD and not detassel any of it. The purpose being to breed the dent characteristics back out while keeping the large ear characteristics. This will be kept in this AD strain henceforth.

The Country Gentleman experiment is different. I don't necessarily want to keep the shoepeg characteristics in the AD. Rather, I simply want the multi colors bred into Country Gentleman. So this batch will be planted at a different time to prevent cross pollination. I might get some more pure Country Gentleman seed and plant alternate rows, or just a block of the crossed seed inside a block of pure CG.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

[grunt]

Johno: if you have any of the Gol x CG and CG x Gol to spare later, or if you'd like someone to do a trial grow out for you, I would be interested. I've been wanting to try both Goliath and Country Gentleman, and probably would have eventually tried doing the same cross. Just picture a shoe peg Goliath cob. I think next year I also try crossing Red Miracle F5 and Painted Mountain.

[canadamike]

I am crossing one of the 4 White Midget accessions, Ames 1830, my favorite, which, after a few years of selection I called PETIT BLANC D'ALFRED, to GOLDEN BANTAM, the true 8 rows heirloom. So far it looks good, they should tassell together soon, I planted them late at the museum. So far so good.

Another accession, NSL 5631 is too inbred to produce an ear. Too bad because it is even smaller a plant than Petit Blanc. So I tried to mass cross it with Kennedy's White Midget, White Midget Improved and Country Gentleman. None of them survived the birds.

My crosses of ONEIDA and LOIC'S, a white flour corn from Quebec that is somewhat similar had the same fate. Same thing happened to my plantings of Dan's Bear Island and 4 other ones.

For some weird reason, only Petit Blanc and the PB xG.Bantam have survived the birds untouched.

I talked about it on another post in the forum: in our area, a lot of the corns put in the ground around the beginning of June got attacked by the birds, whole plantings were destroyed, eaten or uprooted. Nobody has ever seen anything like that.

Alfred Hitchcock is still alive

Has anybody ever experienced something similar?

[johno]

Michel, when I grow popcorn I find the birds peeling the husks down from the tip and eating the kernals, but they rarely get it all.
_____________________________

Today I harvested the first few (drying) ears of Astronomy Domine. I was disappointed to find that they were molding and even had a few sprouts inside. Weeks ago we had heavy rains, and I wonder if they were in silk at that time and the water got inside?

[johno]

I've harvested most of the Astronomy Domine and am starting to harvest Goliath X AD and Country Gentleman X AD. I should have done more frequent hand-pollinations (not too many kernals on some cobs), but I am getting enough colored kernals to start a new population. The CG X AD looks cool!

[Alan]

That is beyond awesome Johno, if you can get a pick of AD X Goliath I'd love to see the baby my baby helped make. lol