understanding corn genetics

[Joseph Lofthouse]

In my garden corn usually survives the first few fall frosts... My cucumbers generally get killed by frost weeks before the corn is damaged by it. Even if a frost nips the leafs, or even if it kills the leafs, the first few frosts don't penetrate the husks of the cob, so I think that the kernels continue to mature using the nutrients inside the stalk.

[12540dumont]

Dar, what kind of corn is your drought tolerant? Have you received seed from Cimmyt? I tried to order rice from CGIAR, but the cost was prohibitive. ($75 per variety). Sandhill has lots of interesting corn.

I always have trouble with seed catalogs, something about the glowing superlatives.

I love that Texas Gourdseed Corn. The flavor in bread/bisquits/muffins is very good. So, is their a Gourdseed or similar type of flour corn that has a shorter season? This 120 day corn gives my ulcers, ulcers. Can you think of a way to get it earlier without crossing it to something else? Have you met a beautiful flour corn?

Joseph, it makes you feel any better, we have tried Seminole 3 years in a row and have never gotten a squash...not even one. There's one of those seeds I'm passing on to someone else!

Of the early hybrid sweet corns, has anyone found one that's reliable? Without the pink nasty pretreatment?

Thanks, Holly

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 26, 2011 13:58:39 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

Of the early hybrid sweet corns, has anyone found one that's reliable? Without the pink nasty pretreatment?

Two years ago I made my own hybrids... su sweet corn mothers pollinated by sugary enhanced sweet corn. The seed was very reliable in cold soil. And the cobs were sweeter than su since 25% of the kernels were sugary enhanced. I'm wishing now that I had made more of it.

Perhaps there is commercial seed that matches that scenario?

I'm working on breeding a homozygous sugary enhanced corn that will germinate well without the pink poison, but it's not yet in hand.

[DarJones]

Holly, I love Cherokee Squaw for most of the reasons you state re gourdseed. It makes a wonderful blue cornbread.

If you want a really really good flour corn, get some Cherokee White. I think I have enough to spare you a pack of about 100 seed if you want it.

My drought tolerant corn is a selection out of Hickory King that I first grew in 1988. We had a record breaking drought that year. Out of roughly 500 plants, I got an ear of corn off of 3. There were nubbins on a few more plants, but nothing worth saving. I have grown it several times since and have practiced ruthless selection any time we have a drought. It is now capable of producing about 70% of a full crop even in the worst drought. In a normal year, it will yield 1 or 2 ears 8 to 12 inches long on each plant.

Otherwise, the best I can do is offer you tagamet for the ulcers and a prescription of lots of time in the garden to reduce stress.

Joseph, are you interested in a bicolor yellow and white variety? I am going to try to get a row of Merit grown beside a row of Silver King this year. The maturity would be long for your climate, but should average about 85 days from seed. Germination should be about typical of Merit which is a strong germinator even in cool soils.

DarJones

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I'm aiming for 60 to 75 day sweet corn... 85 days just seems too long for my garden.

[Deleted]

Speaking of sweet corn, I've heard that Peru's Chulpi is supposedly the ancestor of all modern sweet corns. Is this true?

[blueadzuki]

Nov 27, 2011 9:09:58 GMT -5 @bjargakarlinn said:

Speaking of sweet corn, I've heard that Peru's Chulpi is supposedly the ancestor of all modern sweet corns. Is this true?

I do not know defintively, but I tend to doubt it. The mutation that makes sweetcorn has occured many, many times in the domestication of corn so it wouldn't have to be transmitted from as far as Peru. And a lot of Native American Tribes didn't really grow sweetcorn. Come to think of it, a lot of settlers didn'nt really grow sweetcorn, most of the corn on the cob eaten back then was from roasting corns (corns you could pick young for corn on the cob, but would mature into starchy corn you could grind). Sweetcorn didn't really come into it's own until transportation tech had reached the point where it was possible to send ears of sweetcorn to other markets and have it still edible when it got there, when corn on the cob became a commodity in itself, as opposed to a summer treat. The peruvians may have been growing thier sweetcorn for longer than anyone else, but that does not neccecarily mean it is the ancestor of all of the others.

[12540dumont]

Dar,
For heaven sake, do not send more corn! At least not this year. These are the corns we need to plant.

Mystique 74 days (4 x)
Kaanga Pango which could be like a Hopi Blue or Navajo Black? 110 days
Cascade Maple Gold 104 days
Florianni - 100 days
Marano Vincentino 67days to SILK
Mystery Sexy Stripey Corn- 1900 Heat Units
Tohono O'Odham Flour - 60 days

I don't even have room for popcorn, again. So that everyone can see and learn from this example, can you post a planting plan for all this corn? (I hate the way that you have to compare oranges to apples). I wish everyone who sold corn would put it into Growing Degree Days (GDD) so a chart would be easy.

The earliest planting date here is April 15. (Last frost). Soil temperature hits 65 by April 25. The last day we normally plant corn is July 1, usually a sweet corn.

Also, is the Drought Tolerant White, sold by Sandhill your corn?

In case any of you are wondering,

Mystique is my hybrid sweet for the season. It was chosen because it harvests over a 10 day period.

The Maple Gold, Florianni, and Marano corns are all polenta corns.

The Kaanga Pango is my posole/tortilla corn for the year.

I hope good things for the Tohono O'Odham flour corn...and I know nothing about the Mystery corn. Hopefully, it's edible. But what is life without mystery?

Thank you Dar!

Next year, the Cherokee White. Regards, Holly

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I normally do my first planting of corn about 3-4 weeks before average last frost date. So far I haven't lost a crop to frost.

[Deleted]

Joseph, even if the young corn foliage does get damaged by frost, it will regrow so long as the growing point is below the surface, right? At least, that's how I understand it.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 27, 2011 15:03:20 GMT -5 @bjargakarlinn said:

Joseph, even if the young corn foliage does get damaged by frost, it will regrow so long as the growing point is below the surface, right? At least, that's how I understand it.

That time of year, I'm planting other things and it's too early to weed, so I haven't payed attention to the corn. It takes care of itself. I just plant corn early, and it grows when it gets warm enough to grow. My climate has a radical break between cold weather and hot weather, so results might vary in other climates.

[12540dumont]

I've tried the early corn planting, and much of the seed rotted in the ground. April here can be wet or dry, cold or hot. Some years it goes from one to the other. But in my 20 years of farming, we've only had a frost after April 15 once.

Most years I can get in the field in January, but not in March or early April.

Every year I try to sneak things out into the garden and every year Leo wags his finger at me and gives me the plant in haste, repent in leisure lecture. I pretty much know that there will be a lot of "I told you so" if I push things too early. Last year it did no good anyway, in a month that we normally have 337 GDD, we had 220. The corn just sat there, 3 inches tall. When a 60 day corn takes 90, you know something is up.

Joseph, I put this idea in my trial book. When I get a spot I'm going to trial putting in flint corn 3 weeks before frost.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 27, 2011 19:58:55 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

The corn just sat there, 3 inches tall. When a 60 day corn takes 90, you know something is up.

Sounds like a normal growing season to me...

Flint, flour, and su sweet corns do great for me when planted early. Early plantings of sugary enhanced corn fail.

[Deleted]

Is it true that dark colored corn seeds tend to germinate faster than lighter ones? I've heard that's the case with black snap bean seeds versus white.

[DarJones]

There is an effect where beans that have purple vines and purple pods tend to germinate better in cool soil. The seed from this type bean is always beige in my experience. Corn on the other hand has better germination from red or purple seed than from white or yellow and also better from field type starchy corn compared to any type sweet corn.

DarJones