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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 26, 2013 11:31:35 GMT -5
I didn't grow Glass Gem for sharing this year. (I only grew it to cross with my popcorn.) I didn't like being caught in the middle of a mania. I never realized when I planted the seed that it would be super-hyped before fall. (I would have planted much more seed!!!) It was interesting to watch the distribution of seed on eBay from the 3 original growers, and how it got repackaged and resold. Copyright violations regarding photos were rampant. The lies astounded me. Sheesh. If you think Glass Gem was long season in your garden, you should have seen it in mine before I selected for shorter season. Here's what my [Glass Gem X popcorn] cross (F1) looked like a few minutes ago.  |
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Oct 26, 2013 12:12:45 GMT -5
Wow, those colors are really impressing!! what popcorn did you cross it with? Knowing your projects a bit I suppose you have a multicolored popcorn landrace already?
That hype seemed totally overblown to me (like most hypes). One or two pretty pictures of a multicolored corn cob and people go crazy... What idiot pays so much money for only a few grains of corn which is not enough to get a stable gene pool. Even my 50 plants don't come close to the recommended number of plants for seed saving at all and people were almost selling their souls for a lot less...
I probably did one copyright violation in my article when I used 'the' original glass gem picture that went viral as my first picture? Do you know who originally made it it so I can credit it to that person?
It is too long-season for me still, some plants are hardly beyond flowering even now...
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 26, 2013 13:34:36 GMT -5
I don't know the source of the viral Glass Gem photo. I started a popcorn landrace in the 2009 growing season by inter-planting popcorn with decorative flour, flint, and dent corns. In the 2010 growing season they were allowed another year of promiscuous pollination. Starting in the 2011 growing season I began heavy selection for great popping ability. If I had it to do over again, I would start by making a hybrid in the first growing season. I think that would make selection easier down the road. Here's what part of the popcorn harvest looked like this fall. The small cobs near the top right of the photo are Glass Gem.  |
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Post by raymondo on Oct 26, 2013 14:47:59 GMT -5
... If I had it to do over again, I would start by making a hybrid in the first growing season. ... By that, do mean a more controlled cross instead of allowing random crosses? |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 26, 2013 19:19:50 GMT -5
Ray: Yes. I'd (try to) make a more controlled cross. I tried that this year: to cross glass gem into my popcorn, but I missed detasseling one of the rows, so some of them went willy-nilly into the patch, and some of them (in a different row that did get detasseled) got crossed with my popcorn. I'm intending to not plant the willy-nilly cobs. They shed some pollen which may have transferred the poor popping trait into my popcorn, but since it was a small percentage I'm not going to worry about it. And double not worry about it because I have been selecting my popcorn every year for earlier maturity, so my popcorn and the non-detasseled Glass Gem were mostly not flowering at the same time.
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Post by homegrower on Oct 27, 2013 12:50:18 GMT -5
Excellent write up on Glass Gem Corn: Joseph was more than generous to send them my way  |
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Nov 23, 2013 5:35:39 GMT -5
I did harvest some more glass gem the week, just in time before the winter begun here in Belgium. (some were in baby-corn or sweetcorn/milk stage too, half november, which means they are not for this climate..) I did have a very diverse lot of multicolored corn, even apart from the fact that more than half of it wasn't ready yet. Some looked like more typical glass gem, some more like 'unique' ornamental corn ears, and a few that were very blue although still multicolored... Some had bigger seeds and others had smaller seeds. For saving seeds I want to know what the most typical is for 'glass gem', I suppose more smaller seeds How many rows of kernels does glass gem have? (It varies from 10 to 14) It does seem that those first 2 very yellow ears that I photographed in my picture were very atypical, and probably no real glass gem but a cross with some kind of popcorn maize. I tested 20 seeds today for popping, and I had 90% turning to popcorn. (And I'm quite bad at making popcorn. So maybe if I have a place I'll grow out some of that accidental 'golden gem popcorn' next year to see what it does..   |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 23, 2013 11:38:31 GMT -5
Last year when I grew glass gem, the first couple of cobs to mature were atypical. They matured so much sooner than the rest of the patch that I bet they didn't even cross pollinate. The colors were off. I hear people say that Glass Gem is a popcorn, but the cobs I tested all popped at around 5% or less. I am very good at popping corn. I agree with your assessment that the yellow cob that popped well and matured early seems atypical.
For me, the population contained cobs with medium sized kernels and with small kernels. If I were interested in preserving Glass Gem, I'd only save seeds from cobs that look like those in the photo where the cobs are arranged in a circle. Those look consistent with the Bell strain and the CableGuy strain of Glass Gem. The main difference between these two strains is that the CableGuy strain produces larger seeds on average. It seems to me like the NativeSeeds/SEARCH strain has diverged so far from typical that I don't even know if I'd call it Glass Gem any more: The colors are off, and the kernel size is much smaller than usual, and they keep making the claim that it is a popcorn.
p.s. I just tried popping the CableGuy strain. It only popped about 5%.
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