niku
gopher
Posts: 3
|
Post by niku on Aug 28, 2011 19:19:59 GMT -5
I'm not sure that this is the right place for me, but I do have a question on corn. More specifically, I want to know where I can buy "Hastings Profile Corn". I've spent more than half a day looking for a source, and I definitely now know that when one of the sites I visited said that this variety is hard to find, he wasn't exaggerating. As a matter of fact, I had given up on my search when I stumbled across this site. I finally just bought some "Six Shooter," since I couldn't find HPC. The closest I got was a reference in the 6th Edition of "Garden Seed Inventory," which said that this variety was dropped in 1998. Oh, there is one more thing I'm going to try on Monday. I did find a Hastings Company site, so I'm going to give them a call. I believe that they stopped selling seed many years ago, but maybe someone there will have some ideas.
|
|
niku
gopher
Posts: 3
|
Post by niku on Aug 28, 2011 19:23:30 GMT -5
Well, I guess I did something wrong. I wasn't trying to respond to anyway; I was just trying to post my inquiry.
|
|
niku
gopher
Posts: 3
|
Post by niku on Aug 28, 2011 19:31:49 GMT -5
That should be "anyone," not "anyway'. What a start.
|
|
|
Post by DarJones on Aug 28, 2011 20:54:48 GMT -5
Niku, Hastings Prolific is still available from a few sources. You might check the Seed Savers catalog.
If you can't find it there, you can request seed from ars-grin. I found several accessions such as pi540785.
DarJones
|
|
|
Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Feb 19, 2012 22:56:42 GMT -5
I really like looking at all the different graphs people come up with, and the uses they could use them for. Here is a graph i did today. It's an updated average of my growing season of both 2010 and 2011. It really came out really well. It's easy to see that i can plant cold-tolerant vegetables from March 15th to May 10th if i wanted to. It also shows that for the warmer plants it's best to plant on around May 10th (which is exactly when i planted my watermelons), since the heat really goes up from there. Anyway, I think this graph is very helpful to myself. Look forward to seeing other peoples graphs. I used the cooling data from www.degreedays.net.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 19, 2012 23:30:33 GMT -5
Keen101: Nice chart
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 20, 2012 5:10:06 GMT -5
Keen101, were you using their temp numbers as well or do you have your own max/min data? I've been thinking very strongly about a weather station just to get some accurate data for our frosty little micro-climate here.
|
|
|
Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Feb 20, 2012 12:38:33 GMT -5
Keen101, were you using their temp numbers as well or do you have your own max/min data? I've been thinking very strongly about a weather station just to get some accurate data for our frosty little micro-climate here. I picked the weather station i thought might be the closest, and used the numbers that the website calculated. Then i averaged the last two years together. I've tried a few different weather stations (including ones clear across town), and they all seem close enough that it probably wouldn't matter much for me, but for someone who has a micro-climate maybe it would.
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Feb 20, 2012 13:19:30 GMT -5
Oxbow, I've been thinking about the weather station too. They have one weather station at the airport/read surrounded by concrete and always warmer than it is at the farm. The one in Gilroy has temperature variations of 5 degrees on any given day.
Well, Father's Day is coming. Guess what I'm getting Leo? Anyone who finds a good one, or has one they'd recommend, let me know.
|
|
|
Post by davida on Feb 22, 2012 18:16:39 GMT -5
Hi Joseph, In your example above of 50F + 108F you calculated 29 growing degree days. From what I have seen most set a max of 86F for corn. They say corn does not grow more above 86F. So using the same formula ([(Tmin + Tmax)/2] - 50) but with a max of 86F the growing degree days would be 18 for that day. I'm not sure, temps as high as 108 might even have a negative effect on corn growth? As temps get higher maybe we should be subtracting from GDD? One internet site I was looking at even said that high night-time temps negatively affect corn growth. Too much math for me... If I have a 108 degree day here, it's only above 86F for a few hours: Most of the day it would be somewhere between the high temperature and the low temperature. We could take hour by hour readings and integrate them (a math term), but I'm guessing that taking an average between the high and the low temperature gives almost the same results when considered over a growing season. In my garden I sure don't have to worry about the few hours a growing season that it's over 86F, or about it being warm at night. I am working on a GDD chart for corn in my garden. For our area where the day temps were up to 116F and night temperatures were over 90F on many nights in 2011, I feel that a maximum temp must be determined for the GDD calculation. Is the 86F mentioned by Happyskunk the best maximum number to use? I would have thought it to be higher. And even a few degrees difference in the max will affect the chart greatly. Thanks for the help, David
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 22, 2012 18:34:45 GMT -5
Davida: Have you grown any commonly available varieties of corn through such hot temperatures? If we can find some other gardens that have grown the same varieties, it might be possible to calibrate whether 86F is a real number. Or if you have grown the same variety through the hot weather, and in cooler temperatures....
|
|
|
Post by davida on Feb 22, 2012 21:32:52 GMT -5
Davida: Have you grown any commonly available varieties of corn through such hot temperatures? If we can find some other gardens that have grown the same varieties, it might be possible to calibrate whether 86F is a real number. Or if you have grown the same variety throughi the hot weather, and in cooler temperatures.... Joseph, Sweet corn has always been a challenge but I was trying to grow organically (with absolutely no chemicals) the same varieties of corn the local market farmers were planting and using all of their regularly scheduled fertilizers and chemicals. So I do not have good past data to compare. This year I was planning to plant the 4 AMK corns (Painted Hills for early to beat the heat, double red sweet corn, rainbow inca sweet corn and true gold sweet corn) and your AD corn. I like the genetics of these varieties but the weakness is that the seeds are from drastically cooler and different climates. I was hoping to use the true gold as the sweet corn and the others as both sweet and dry corns. Is this feasible? David
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 22, 2012 22:31:18 GMT -5
I dry Astronomy Domine and use it for animal food. It's better as a parching corn than the one corn I have tried that is marketed as a parch corn. A collaborator grew both Painted Hills and AD in St George Utah last year. They did fine. The AD better than the Painted Hills. The review on AD said something like; "best corn ever". AD came though Indiana and Arkansas on it's way to me, so it may still have many of those warmer weather genes.
There is a lot of seed running around that carries the Rainbow Inca label, but is really a dent corn. If it ain't wrinkly and glassy, it's not Rainbow Inca: it's a mislabeled or contaminated dent.
Based on the last expected frost date for Tulsa, I'd be wanting to get Astronomy Domine in the ground about March 6th...
|
|
|
Post by davida on Feb 22, 2012 22:59:21 GMT -5
Based on the last expected frost date for Tulsa, I'd be wanting to get Astronomy Domine in the ground about March 6th... Joseph, Thanks again for all the information. Especially your recommendation for the Tulsa plant date. We have never even thought about planting corn that early. We will plant 1/2 of both the AD and Painted Hills about March 6th. I know Joseph does not like southern corn bread, but has anyone used AD for cornbread? Thanks, David
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 22, 2012 23:11:38 GMT -5
It's not that I dislike cornbread... It's just that around here we don't use dried corn as human food, so it's unfamiliar.
I have plenty of AD seed so let me know if the early planting croaks, I'll send more.
When do you normally plant corn?
|
|