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Post by 12540dumont on Sept 1, 2014 16:57:16 GMT -5
Sunflower Allelopathy: Residual effects on subsequent crops Paperback – March 11, 2011 by Uzma Bashir (Author)
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 11, 2014 16:22:54 GMT -5
this year I planted a row of sunflowers, then 2 months later planted a row of runner beans between the sunflowers. Oops!!! Just like you say, the sunflowers took the nutrients and the beans are little wimpy things. I'll be lucky if any of them produce seed. I walked the runner bean row yesterday on the path between the bee yard and the honey house. We had just finished robbing the bees. I found two pods among about 150 plants. Woo Hoo!! That's vastly better than finding zero pods.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 12, 2017 8:55:43 GMT -5
I've become recently interested in the Tarahumara culture and the corns of northwestern Mexico in general. I decided to try "Tarahumara Golden Cristalino" from NS/S. SInce I'm breeding my flint population towards high carotene/orange endosperm, I wanted to limit how much additional white/pale endosperm genetics I add. So the Golden Cristalino seemed like the best fit. I have to say I'm pretty impressed with this corn in general. It is extremely short season. I had difficulty overlapping pollination with it with my flint as it was so early maturity. I usually do a couple of successions of a new variety to try and give myself maximum opportunity to overlap pollination timing. I ended up only getting two ears to overlap in my first planting, the two latest secondary ears of the Cristalino overlapped with the earliest tassels of my flint, and the Cristalino that was direct seeded two weeks after my flint had several of the earliest silking ears overlap with the last of the pollen produced from the flint population. Overall it is a light yellow/white flint corn with 8-12 rows. It is VERY flinty overall, and the kernels are tightly attached. Moderate amount of tillering, with ears on the ends of the tillers vs tassels. Stalk and root strength was not terribly impressive, but that's not surprising for such a fast maturing corn. It seemed to have very high tolerance for Northern Leaf Blight and high susceptibility to Common Rust. maicerochico has also recommended Tarahumara Yellow Apachito to me as another great and very similar flint corn, and I take his corn advice very seriously. So next year I'm going to add in the Apachito alongside the Cristalino. I also trialed some Sinaloan derived Onaveño and some Chapalote that I rec'd from Bill Davison. Both were extremely tall, long season corns with big thick stalks with lots of prop roots and huge ear bearing tillers. For the most part they were far too long season for my climate and I only got about 4 ears of hybrid seed from each of them. I was really impressed with their stalks and roots. I really do feel conflicted about Native Seeds/SEARCH. They have a bunch of really interesting and unique germplasm , but they don't seem to conserve it particularly carefully, and they don't actually describe it with much detail or context. There are about 10-11 different corns that they have given various "tarahumara" names like "Tarahumara Conico" , "Tarahumara Tuxpeño", etc. These names are bullshit, they don't actually help you understand what the corn IS, and they certainly aren't the name that the Tarahumara give the corns, if they actually are from the Tarahumara. I'm also still pretty angry with NS/S about the whole Glass Gem Scam. On the other hand, their stated mission is very noble and they do seem to be a good organization overall. I just wish they weren't so sloppy. In any case, here's some of my own Tarahumara Golden Cristalino. These ears are more or less pure, I didn't start detasselling the Cristalino until I saw my own flint was actually pushing out tassels. The hybrid ears I got were actually nubbins on the ends of some of the tillers which silked in overlap with my flint.
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Post by RpR on Dec 13, 2017 14:50:05 GMT -5
Do you do much business with Native Seed Search? I have had several types I have purchased return from zero to spotty germination.
I used to get SouthWest corns from Redwood City seeds and they germinated real well. I think I posted years earlier here some where what I planted but unfortunately with my corn, I do not save seed packets and write years used as I do with my potatoes so for me remembering history is spotty. I do have the old Seed Saver book on available seeds that I did mark some of what I have used and when but that is spotty as I highlighted with yellow what I was going to get but did not write years next to ones I actually used, always.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 13, 2017 16:39:49 GMT -5
I don't buy a large amount of seed from NS/S. I have never had any germination issues with their seed that I recall, certainly not their corns. On the other hand, I am not trying to grow out much of any new corn I acquire, as I am breeding them into my own population, so I typically just plant about 100 row feet in two or three successions to try and maximize pollination overlap. I used them in this case as they had corns approximating what I was looking for, as far as I could tell. I do request seed from GRIN from time to time, but I try not to travel to that well too often.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 14, 2017 11:15:21 GMT -5
I've bought a few things from them over time. I particularly like their Navajo Robin's egg; I consider their strain superior to that carried by most other seed companies (that is I consider their strain the correct one that this corn should be, and a lot of the others as having crossed with something else that has made their kernels small and folded over.)
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