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Post by canadamike on Aug 19, 2011 23:01:30 GMT -5
A few days ago I was with a friend in a garden growing my stuff ( I moved this summer, so I had to be adopted in a few places  ) and was explaining hin that there was sugar in the whole corn plantl To prove it, I pulled up a tiller of BLUE JADE corn and had him bite into it. He could not believe how sweet it was, so I tasted it too...and could't believe it either. BY sugar I meant some....but this thing was so friggin sweet that even 10 minutes after there was a sweet aftertaste in our mouths. We then went across the garden, tasting all the corns, about 10 of them, and the closest was apopcorn he got....from the grocery store. I was expecting a good fight from my WHITE MIDGET X GOLDEN BANTAM cross, but it was a dud... It was a bad idea in a way, Blue Jade is a dwarf multi stem plant, now the term multi has to ne erased, at least from my patch, everybody visiting is invited to a bite in this ''northern'' sugar cane... I did not have my refractometer with me, but if they ever leave a tiller I should measure the brix soon. The darn things are really very sweet for a northern tooth who will never grow shorgo.., at least when young, which is the state they where when we had them Quite an experience, enough for me to grow some and have it tested in a market situation or to try in cooking ...very tender, crisp nonetheless and juicy too... This is something we should explore here I think...... |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Aug 20, 2011 0:41:22 GMT -5
very interesting. Be sure to keep us updated. I would never have thought about tasting the tillers or even the stalks for sweetness. I've heard that corn can be cross bred with sugarcane, but I've heard that the genetics gets really weird and it's hard. But i guess in some ways the two are similar.
So is this sugar in the whole plant only true for sweet corn?
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Post by DarJones on Aug 20, 2011 2:36:48 GMT -5
Corn and sugarcane could only be crossed by doubling the chromosomes so that a full set of corn and a full set of sorghum chromosomes are present in a single cell. That would wack up most of the genetic machinery.
DarJones
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Post by darwinslair on Aug 20, 2011 4:13:26 GMT -5
I would think it would create issues with deer predation as well.
I really dont need my plants tasting better to deer than they already do.
Tom
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Post by canadamike on Aug 21, 2011 22:54:30 GMT -5
There is sugar in the is an important part of corn as sileage material, but there is sugar and sugar, this one was a total surprize... Tom....get Blue Jade than eat the deer  Sweet deer stew has some asian rigging, doesn't it???  |
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Post by darwinslair on Aug 22, 2011 7:57:03 GMT -5
Oh, trust me, I eat deer. That is our primary meat source. But they already are an issue enough in my gardens. I plant a good sized area outside of the gardens in things just for them, but somehow they seem to find and enjoy what I grow for us just as much if not more than what I grow for them.
Then I shoot them and eat them, but can be annoying to lose certain crops.
Tom
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Post by sangrealseeds on Aug 24, 2011 23:15:30 GMT -5
I am also growing Blue Jade this year and have to agree its stalks are sweeter then I could imagined. Like a bamboo shoot crossed with sugarcane only better. I was growing it out to increase seed for next season to cross with Chire's Baby and Martian Jewels, even more excited about the possibilities now.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Aug 25, 2011 17:16:07 GMT -5
how very odd. I'm just curious to know if all sweet corn behaves like this. Is this phenomenon found only in blue jade? Does corn have more than one sugar gene? (are there sugar genes for the cobs, but duplicate sugar genes turned on in the other parts of the plant? Do tillered corns contain more sugar than non tillered. So many questions, i doubt very many of them will be answered though.  |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Aug 26, 2011 5:44:26 GMT -5
I know that if you are in a field of dry field corn, if you find a plant that was too small.crowded to make an ear the dry stalk will be sweet, probably because it never used what stored carbs it had to fill an ear. At least that used to be true back in the 80's in Colorado for folks hunting over picked corn. It seems like the populations they use on the hybrids nowadays are a lot tighter but they still make a lot of grain.
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Post by Hristo on Aug 28, 2011 6:56:03 GMT -5
What a find, Michel! I had tasted some corn stalks, just so see how they taste, not looking for high sugar content. They were nothing special, so your finding comes as real surprise to me. Too bad I renewed my Blue Jade seeds last year and not this. Obviously I'm going to bite some other varieties.
It will be interesting to find what type of sugars there are. Are they mostly glucose/fructose as in the sweet sorghum, or it's mostly sucrose (most probably it's glucose/fructose, but who knows).
Here is a formula to calculate the actual sugars content in sweet sorghum using Brix measurements, which may work and for corn (I remember when I saved this quote I modified the formula a bit, but that does not change the end result):
"the sugar content with brix degree has a positive correlation. Based these equations, we can predicts the sugar content by measuring the brix degree easily. In order to use equation more convenient, we dealt with total sugar content (y) and brix degree (x). Variance analysis appears extremely Significant between Y and X, Our aim is this equation can be used in other varieties besides the tested ones.
The line-correlation is:
Y= 1.974*X -10.24"
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ahto
gopher
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Post by ahto on Jan 16, 2012 16:24:07 GMT -5
Very interesting thread!
Years ago I read about scientific project where tropical sweet corn was brought to USA. Because of shorter growing season it did not produce cobs and kernels but a lot of very sweet foliage. Whole project purpose was sweet corn as fuel ethanol feedstock.
I am big fan of sweet corn. Has been growing 4-5 different varieties. "Earlyevee" has been the best so fare by taste and maturing speed. Still looking for very early varieties (growing season 2-3 weeks shorter compare to "Earlyvee" from seed sowing). Does such short maturing varieties exist at all?
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Post by darwinslair on Jan 16, 2012 21:03:34 GMT -5
there are yukon varieties that mature in 50 days I think. productivity is low, but if you need a really short season sweet corn that is not a bad way to go.
Tom
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ahto
gopher
Posts: 8
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Post by ahto on Jan 17, 2012 10:26:50 GMT -5
Thank you Tom!
Earliest variety I have seen so fare!
Is YUKON SUPREME better version of YUKON?
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Post by ukcambs on Feb 10, 2022 7:42:54 GMT -5
A few days ago I was with a friend in a garden growing my stuff ( I moved this summer, so I had to be adopted in a few places  ) and was explaining hin that there was sugar in the whole corn plantl To prove it, I pulled up a tiller of BLUE JADE corn and had him bite into it. He could not believe how sweet it was, so I tasted it too...and could't believe it either. BY sugar I meant some....but this thing was so friggin sweet that even 10 minutes after there was a sweet aftertaste in our mouths. We then went across the garden, tasting all the corns, about 10 of them, and the closest was apopcorn he got....from the grocery store. I was expecting a good fight from my WHITE MIDGET X GOLDEN BANTAM cross, but it was a dud... It was a bad idea in a way, Blue Jade is a dwarf multi stem plant, now the term multi has to ne erased, at least from my patch, everybody visiting is invited to a bite in this ''northern'' sugar cane... I did not have my refractometer with me, but if they ever leave a tiller I should measure the brix soon. The darn things are really very sweet for a northern tooth who will never grow shorgo.., at least when young, which is the state they where when we had them Quite an experience, enough for me to grow some and have it tested in a market situation or to try in cooking ...very tender, crisp nonetheless and juicy too... This is something we should explore here I think...... |
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Post by ukcambs on Feb 10, 2022 7:43:54 GMT -5
Can you tell me where I get white Midget sweet orn seeds from please
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) and was explaining hin that there was sugar in the whole corn plantl
) and was explaining hin that there was sugar in the whole corn plantl