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Post by blueadzuki on Nov 30, 2010 22:03:30 GMT -5
Joseph, this is just a suggestrion, but if you are still trying sugary enhanced crosses, why not try something along the lines of Wilda's Pride X se. Wildas pride appears to have the same "every color in the rainbow" palette that earth tones has, possibly an even better one, in my opionion Wilda's pride has a much more attractive shade of orange than Earth Tones does (a well colored Wilda's pride cob can look like it was sculpted out of hundreds of gemstone cabachons) maybe it will give you the colorfulness in sweetcorn you desire.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 30, 2010 23:03:24 GMT -5
I made a lot of crosses this summer between Indian Corns, and sugary enhanced sweet corn. Some of the varieties I used look like they could have come straight out of a Wilda's Pride seed packet.
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Post by Alan on Nov 30, 2010 23:14:21 GMT -5
What I think would be ideal and what I might look at one day (taking a hiatus from sweet corn for a bit) is in making crosses between SE varieties and some of the harder to access North Eastern Flint corn types. Short season, cold tolerant corns, some of which were the source of early SU types like Golden Bantam, but I'd look for example for some of the Prince Phillip types which give those classic flat/oblate shaped flint kernals in shades of purple, red, yellow, ivory, and orange that aren't yet available in other sweet corn accessions.
For now however I leave the sweet corn to others like Joseph.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 3, 2010 13:12:07 GMT -5
Wilda's Pride is a beautiful "ornamental" corn, but the 110 DTM is a killer for some of us to work into a sweet corn when we have a shorter growing season. I ended up carrying pollen from the other end of the field because the closely planted pollen donors finished long before these started silking. Hopefully some earlier maturing varieties will segregate out since I was using 65, 75, and 85 day pollen donors. I think I'll skip 85 day corn from now on. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 3, 2010 15:28:07 GMT -5
Blueadzuki, Wilda's Pride is a beautiful "ornamental" corn, but the 110 DTM is a killer for some of us to work into a sweet corn when we have a shorter growing season. Dust Sorry about that. I have a cofession to make, I have never actually grown Wilda's Pride myself (for all the other wonderful color things WP has, the "spotting" gene that I search for so avidly isn't all that common in it, so there really isn't all that much WP in my working grex) I see a lot of WP at the farmers market, and sometimes buy a little for the house ornamentation (the corn I grow usually doesn't have total pollination so I wind up with a lot of misshapen cobs; fine for breeding but not really "attactive" enough for the doors.) and simply always though of it as the flint analouge to Earth tones (actually since, as I understand, WP was a "found" corn not a "bred" one, it may be exactly that). I live a little south of you (6b) so 110 DTM is not as much of a problem for me than it would be for you but I can certainly see why you might want to avoid it. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 16, 2011 14:10:41 GMT -5
Some reviews that Astronomy Domine sweet corn seeds have been getting on eBay:
nice seeds
I'm happy.
good Items A+A+A+
They carry news that must get through. To build a dream for me and you.
Seed arrived today looking forward to planting time.
I am so happy with this purchase & glad I found you! I will care for these!
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Post by DarJones on Feb 16, 2011 16:20:49 GMT -5
Just curiosity Joseph, but do you consider seed sales on Ebay to be worth your time and effort?
DarJones
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 16, 2011 20:27:53 GMT -5
Just curiosity Joseph, but do you consider seed sales on Ebay to be worth your time and effort? I consider eBay to be a great marketing tool. If I were starting a seed company I'd sure want to use it as an easy way to compile a mailing list for next year's catalog, especially since I was advertising the seeds as "landrace". I'd get a very targeted mailing list. Hundreds of garden related web sites picked up the Astronomy Domine eBay ads as part of the eBay affiliate advertising program, and then Google indexed those sites and displayed the search results in general search engine queries. So for a few weeks there there were thousands of copies of my ad on garden related web sites advertising "Astronomy Domine Sweet Corn", and "Open pollinated sweet corn", and "Land-race sweet corn", etc. Then I ran out of seed. That was some weeks ago and there are still 849 results listed in a Google search for my ad. I was slightly annoyed by it, because when I searched for blog entries regarding Astronomy Domine I got overwhelmed by my own ad. I was getting between $0.99 and $4.00 for a packet of about 150 seeds with the average being $1.96, so that works out to something like $80 per dozen cobs of Astronomy Domine. I could make a living as a farmer for those kinds of prices. |
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Post by Darth Slater on Feb 16, 2011 23:46:18 GMT -5
Hey guys, I am corn dumb, so a little patience please.
Is there a corn that has colored kernels and sweet also?
Or is that basically what Astronimy is?
I have a vacant field with no water going to it, that can be a test ground for someone, if they can live there, they are worth thier weight in gold.
Also, there are little or no nutrients in the soil, I did however plant alf alfa in it last year and tilled it under.
Darth
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2011 0:33:47 GMT -5
Astronomy Domine is an old fashioned sweet corn: Chewy and not overly sugary. The most prominent colors of the kernels are various shades of white, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, lavender, and gray. Once in a while a greenish or a bluish kernel shows up. I tend to select against yellow kernels.
From my sugary enhanced breeding program (which is just getting a good start) I have tender high sugar kernels in white, yellow, orange, gray, and 4 kernels of red. Not the same shades of those colors as in Astronomy Domine though. I expect more colors this fall after the F1 crosses between Astronomy Domine and Sugary-Enhanced have segregated.
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Post by Darth Slater on Feb 17, 2011 2:37:38 GMT -5
Thanks Joseph, PM recieved, Lets see what happens!! I will take pics.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 27, 2011 0:38:18 GMT -5
I planted my breeding/market population of Astronomy Domine sweet corn today. As follows: - 7 seeds each planted ear to row of the best couple dozen cobs from last year. ~360 seeds. (Best defined as having the most color at fresh eating stage.)
- Alan's current F5 seed ~120 yellow kernels. (will be detasseled to minimize yellow population)
- Alan's current F5 seed ~120 colored kernels (will be detasseled for improved integration into my garden.)
- ~25 white seeds from last year.
- A blend of ~340 seeds of the most colorful cobs and largest kernels from last year.
I also planted 11 semi-isolated patches of Astronomy Domine by color and/or cob type. - White
- Yellow
- Orange
- Red
- Purple
- Gray
- 8 rows of kernels
- Lavender
- Pudding-like endosperm
- Transposon stripes
My intent is to then blend this seed back into the main population so that there will always be some mostly white cobs, some long narrow cobs, etc... One thing that jumped right out at me when I was planting the ear to row seeds is that my sense of color and my color vocabulary are extremely limited. I might have put red on the outside of the envelope, but when I opened it the colors were boldly different than "red". Between Astronomy Domine and other things, I planted 4095 feet of row today. |
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 27, 2011 5:34:13 GMT -5
WOW! You sure have us beat by a LONG shot! We have 1,200 feet of row. However, Mike put a new Harbor Freight motor on the rear tine tiller which lost it's original motor in the fire. He went off to test it out and as he left he was chanting at the top of his voice "KILL THE LAWN! KILL THE LAWN!"
Next thing I knew we had another 200 sq ft added to the corn field. ;o)
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 27, 2011 12:39:04 GMT -5
One thing that jumped right out at me when I was planting the ear to row seeds is that my sense of color and my color vocabulary are extremely limited. I might have put red on the outside of the envelope, but when I opened it the colors were boldly different than "red". I noticed that with my corn too. I didn't label mine in separate envelopes, but i did notice i was missing seeds from a really good short cob that had nice red seeds. I know i mixed them in with the batch, but they must have changed colors when they dried even more. I suspect they may be more of a dark golden color now, or at least a much darker red than i would have expected. |
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 27, 2011 20:59:00 GMT -5
Wouldn't it be reasonable for seed colors to change somewhat during storage? Couldn't some of the color change be indicative of the seed's viability?
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