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Post by DarJones on Aug 24, 2013 23:38:51 GMT -5
Sometimes you have to buy your own field. Mine is 130 acres.
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Post by ilex on Aug 25, 2013 0:53:23 GMT -5
All eating stage:  Best tasting corn I've ever tasted:  I liked how this one looks:  |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 25, 2013 8:26:47 GMT -5
There was a glut of sweet corn at market this week. Astronomy Domine was the best selling corn. Astronomy Domine just plain looked better. One fellow looked at what I had on the table, and pointed to a cob and said: "Los mejores son morados." I agree with him. I also think that the purple kernels taste best.
I heard constant comments about how great it looked. A few people thanked me for preserving traditional corn. One lady bought two dozen, thanking me for providing a nostalgic experience for her. Definitely my favorite crop of the year.
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Post by bunkie on Aug 25, 2013 16:44:29 GMT -5
There was a glut of sweet corn at market this week. Astronomy Domine was the best selling corn. Astronomy Domine just plain looked better. One fellow looked at what I had on the table, and pointed to a cob and said: "Los mejores son morados." I agree with him. I also think that the purple kernels taste best. ... Joseph, are you still working on the lavender variety? |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 25, 2013 19:03:17 GMT -5
Joseph, are you still working on the lavender variety? Yes. I planted semi-isolated patches of the various colors this year. Lavender was among them. Sorry I don't have a good camera this summer.  The lavender is not as well developed as the red-violet:  The general population looked like this:  I have went through the patch and marked plants I want to save for seed: Green ribbons for plants that show bright early colors. Red ribbons for plants that grew especially well.  |
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Post by Andre on Aug 26, 2013 7:56:12 GMT -5
Best tasting corn I've ever tasted: What is this red one ? It's wonderful !!! |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 26, 2013 8:51:35 GMT -5
What is this red one ? It's wonderful !!! I call it "Red pericarp". They are common in Astronomy Domine. I really like the taste of the purples/reds in corn. A little bit of vinegar added to the cooking water preserves the color during cooking. Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm. |
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Post by Andre on Aug 26, 2013 10:29:49 GMT -5
The only problem is that landraces are more difficult to transmit to someone with a different soil or climate. Every body should create his own landraces but this requires skills and time. I guess that's why cultivars have been created. I would say that landraces are easier than cultivars to move to different gardens with different conditions. Because the wide genetic diversity allows them to adapt to their new home. I was meaning that it's more difficult to transmit something very specific. Let's say you send me some Golden Bantam seeds, I know what kind of corn I will get because Golden bantam is precisely described (size of the plant, number of rows, length and weight of ears, color, taste, disease sensibility, average yeld, resistance to drought, wind, parasites, etc...) With the AD seeds, you sent me (thank you again BTW ;-) ) I don't know exactly what will grow except that this will be sweet corn with 16 rows of kernels +/- 2 rows with around 30% sugary enhanced and around 900 GDD:10C. So I would say landraces are a kind of family of heterogenous and variable cv. I see more breeding as cooking where you have precise recipe and where you select ingredients depending on what you want to eat at the end in your plate. To make pan cakes or donuts (these are "cooking cv"), you need flour, yeast, butter, milk, sugar and eggs (these are "genes" or alleles). Depending on the way you mix and cook all these ingredients you have pan cakes or you have donuts. Of course if you mix all the ingredients without a precise recipe you may have something good but you also may have something bad, that's why I found "classical" cv more reliable. But anyway I'll try next year the landraces point of view ;-) |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 26, 2013 12:02:43 GMT -5
Yup. Landraces are like a stir fry... Some combination of meat, vegetables, and sauce. The meat, vegetables, and sauce might change from day to day, but it will always be a stir fry. Around here we have a food called a "Standard Whopper". It is a hamburger with precise specifications about what goes into it and the order and amount of each ingredient. I can make a hamburger at home, but it will never be a Whopper. Here's a better photo of what my version of Astronomy Domine looks like. Taken this morning.  |
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Post by ilex on Aug 26, 2013 14:13:04 GMT -5
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Post by ilex on Aug 26, 2013 15:00:19 GMT -5
I only noticed one pest, some very tiny beetles that ate some of the kernels of fairly mature corn. Don't know what they are. I suspect they are after the super sweet ones.
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Post by templeton on Aug 27, 2013 2:27:16 GMT -5
Today is my favorite gardening day of the year... I got all excited, joseph's favourite day is my birthday! then i read on...  Looking forward to those pictures, Joseph - colored sweet corn, yum! T |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 27, 2013 8:38:50 GMT -5
Happy belated birthday Templeton. Another reason to love the Astronomy Domine harvest. I asked family to take photos with a better camera. I'll see if I can get hold of them.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 12, 2013 0:17:23 GMT -5
I mostly finished harvesting my Astronomy Domine sweet corn seed crop yesterday. Here is what it looked like.  The cobs in baskets were grown in semi-isolated patches, and they were flagged very early in the fresh eating stage because they had lots of early color. I'm quite pleased with how well I've been able to select for similar colors to go into the patches. Brilliant early colors is a project I've been working on for a few generations now. Here's what the red patch looked like.  I uploaded many high resolution close-up photos to my Astronomy Domine Album on Photobucket. |
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Post by YoungAllotmenteer on Sept 12, 2013 1:14:19 GMT -5
Joseph I LOVE the photos of the Atronomy Domine! What wonderful colours.
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