Astronomy Domine

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's what my largest Astronomy Domine patch looked like yesterday (July 21st).

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's a photo taken today of other patches of Astronomy Domine:



The patches underlined with red are about 11 semi-isolated patches grouped by color or type: All red, all yellow, all white, 8 rows of kernels, etc....

The yellow underlined rows are about 50 rows of an F1 hybrid between Astronomy Domine and sugary enhanced sweet corn. They are likewise planted in patches of similar type, but not isolated from each other. I will send many of these to market. Some of them will be sorted looking for the perfect open pollinated sugary enhanced sweet corn to use as a pollen donor for my hybrid corn.

With the exception of a couple of patches that are sibling groups, the seeds for these patches came from the general pool.

The patch in the foreground is an open pollinated su sweet corn from one of my neighbors. I'm expecting to detassel it and pollinate it with sugary enhanced sweet corn to make an F1 hybrid.

The patch that is being watered is the same Astronomy Domine patch from yesterday's photo.

[DarJones]

Weeds mon! Weeds! You gotem!

[nuts]

This is my astronomy domine patch a few days ago.


As you can see it is planted rather dense.
This is part of my selection strategie.If there is much concurrence,only the plants that are the most vigorous/early/tall will produce good ears.The plants that are not winners in the race will produce small ears.

A selection patch should produce 50+ good ears,and a few grains of every ears should be saved,the rest is chicked food

A frustrating thing about a selection patch is that you can't eat the big,good looking ears,I just can eat some small ugly ears

If you want to eat a lot of it,it's better to have seperate selection and production patches.

[mnjrutherford]

OK, I like that strategy Nuts. That would work beautifully in the patch at the back of the shed. Actually, that's what I did. I blended your AD, Fusion's Cherokee Squaw, and some Trucker's favorite. I made a very dense planting interspersed with black oil sunflowers.

The planting looks exquisite. It didn't suffer a lot from the lack of water, perhaps because I covered with about an inch of hay right after planting. The soil was "amended" sorta, by the burnt up shed from February. The sunflowers produced like crazy. Still are in fact. The corn is beautiful till you look close. The stalks are very slender. There are not a lot of ears but what there are seem to be filling out nice and even, relatively bug free at this point. They do seem to be a bit on the "thin" side though. I wanted to save the seed from this patch as my very first attempt at breeding/crossing.

If the ears are a bit on the skimpy side, should I just blow it off and wait till next year?

[nuts]

If the ears are a bit on the skimpy side, should I just blow it off and wait till next year?

I would keep the seeds from the best ears.

I don't know if it's a good thing to mix it with sunflowers.Maybe that's one of the reasons they are somewhat skimpy .

With a dense planting I expect the average size of the ears lower,but on the other hand,more difference between best performing plants and less well performing plants.

[Darth Slater]

Ok, now I see I had nothing to worry about, my corn from Joseph looks just like what you folks are showing AD to look like, I like the dark colored stalks the silks are any where from red to dark purple, I do however have some stuff growing that looks like corn but has millet looking heads coming off of it, its purple also I have never seen anything like it before so maybe someone can help?
The Blue hopi se corn I also got from joseph is a work of art, keep in mind I have no watering system in the back 40 and these are monster stalks with big robust ears growing on them, the plants took a deer hit when they were younger and you can not even tell!!

[Darth Slater]

I guess i will have to have one of you folks tell me how to save the seeds, I think i am going to save all the ears from the darker stalks.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jul 29, 2011 0:20:37 GMT -5 Darth Slater said:

I guess i will have to have one of you folks tell me how to save the seeds, I think i am going to save all the ears from the darker stalks.

My strategy last year was to walk through the patch at harvest time (fresh eating stage), and to open each ear so I could see what it looked like. Anything that was very colorful at that point was marked with a piece of surveyor's tape and left on the stalk. Anything that was mostly yellow was picked and sold at market. 2-3 weeks later I picked the marked cobs, shucked them, and allowed them to dry in the garage on screened trays (seed flat holders).

[mnjrutherford]

Yesterday Mike pulled a few stunted ears of Cherokee saying, "here's a few more for seed!" The poor man is desperate to have enough seed for next year. I told him we didn't need to be quite that desperate. I confess, as low as the yield has been this year, I'm tempted....

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here I am this morning: Out standing in my field of Astronomy Domine sweet corn. It's in a small plot that housed a horse for many years. It really likes the soil here, even though it is surrounded by trees.

[mnjrutherford]

Corn that knows the meaning of water! So, there seems to be some height variation? Also, shouldn't your arms be up and bent at the elbows? ;o)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here are some photos of astronomy Domine sweet corn. They were taken today, August 6th.

The patch that they were growing in:


Most of the plants had yellow tassels with yellow anthers, something like this:


There were also plants with yellow tassels and purple anthers: (The two plants in the photo with purple anthers are siblings.)


Then there were plants with purple tassels, and yellow anthers:


And the only combination left: purple tassels and purple anthers:


Some plants had both purple silks and purple tassels:


The color of the silks, tassels, and anthers seems to be non-linked traits. Meaning that the silk color and the tassel color and the anther color can be either yellow or purple. However, the color of the tassel and the stalk color seem to be linked in that plants with purple tassels have at least some degree of purple in the stalk. I'm speculating that the purple cob trait will also be linked with the purple stalk trait.

Here is a sibling group (same mother) that share a similar trait of purple stalks and purple tassels. Half of the plants had yellow anthers. The others had purple. Too early to tell about silk color.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Nice pics! I have also observed those color combinations. Also thanks for reminding me that tassels and anthers are not the same thing. Here's a picture of one of mine that you might be interested in. It is showing a red/purple coloring in the leaf axil (i think that's what it's called), and i believe this only happens when a corn plant is homozygous for the purple stalk gene. It also seems to be linked with purple coloring in the leaves themselves (which is somewhat dependent on bright sunlight and cold temperatures). Your probably right about the stalk color and tassel color being linked. And as far as i know the traits for silks, pollen (anthers), and tassels are all separate. I have seen in between colors too. I have seen both anther and tassel colors which are more of a pink/peachy color before.

[Darth Slater]

Well the deer got my ADs...I hope I am able to get more seed, I did however eat my first ear of Josephs SE Blue Hopi, I thought this wasn't supposed to be real sweet!!
This was a delicious corn!!!
Even better, grows huge ears and almost nothing to do but put it in the ground, the only water it recieved was from the rain..and it was tender.
I have never seen a sweet corn that acted like field corn and tasted great!!