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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 16, 2014 10:47:32 GMT -5
Reed, it looks like your "big red" ear that you are so nuts about is somewhere in between a parching corn and a popcorn. Whatever it is, it works for you. In a lot of my breeding projects, what motivated me to do the work was indeed that I went absolutely nuts over a particular flavor. The deep red pericarp ears are indeed spectacular in flavor when they are parching corn.
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Post by blueadzuki on Nov 16, 2014 12:47:43 GMT -5
I'm guessing a thinner ear is often preferred for a shorter drying time, Is that correct? Right. Here in maritime Oregon corn goes to apparent dryness in the field, but still requires a little finishing off indoors before it is safe from mold and dry enough to shell. But that is only if the overall thickness of the ears is modest. If the ear is fat it takes much more serious drying such as an actual drier with fan and heat rather than just putting the pile in front of a fan indoors and turning it a few times. New Englanders have the same problem, so much native American and heirloom New England corn is 8-row or at least fairly narrow cobbed. With Cascade Ruby-Gold, which varies from 8-12 rows, I've had a good chance to see how row number, ear thickness, and gaps between double rows (such as is typical of Roy's Calais) affects drydown. My prediction as I began developing Cascade Ruby-Gold was that with equal ear thickness, the ears with pairs of rows with big gaps should dry down faster. Wrong. They don't seem to. Likewise, I would have predicted that with equal ear thickness, the 8-row ears would dry down faster than the 12-row ears. Wrong again. They dry down the same. The only thing the ears seem to care about when it comes to drying down is how thick they are. Thicker ears always dry down slower than thinner ones. I've had one or two cases where the kernel nature affected drying a bit. In particular there was the ear I called "Rainbow Zamia" The kernels on that were so smooth and closely matched to the curve of the ear that the ear as a whole was basically tessellated (no real gaps or cracks at all between one kernel and the next) That ear ended up taking FOREVER to dry since the lack of any gaps meant that any moisture under the surface was basically "locked in" for good; it had no way to get out. Around the three month mark. I began to get nervous about the stuff simply rotting of it's own accord (the ultra tight kernels also meant that the "wiggle test" didn't really work either, they were packed too tight to wiggle anyway so my intel on it's state of drying wasn't optimal) and I decided to help it along a bit. I think that eventually I snapped off the husks, drilled out the center of the cob (it wasn't a hollow cobbed corn) and sticking the ear on a curling iron set on "low" that I'd wrapped in thin cloth (I didn't want the iron to be in contact with the naked cob material, lest the cob begin to actually burn.) That actually worked after a few days; sort of drying an ear from the inside out. Don't have that corn anymore, I think the animals ate the last of it. Probably just as well; as pretty as it was, it was crazy hard to shell by hand (again, the tight kernels) and I imagine almost impossible to do with one of those machines (I've never actually used one of those crank things, but I assume that, if the ear is too smooth, there's nothing for the gears inside to grab onto.) |
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Post by Walk on Nov 16, 2014 16:52:58 GMT -5
I usually aim for an average of 8" between plants and 3.5' between rows in our seed production field, but where two nice plants are only 6" apart, we leave them and just give them a little more space on the other side. The space between rows has more to do with what I've generally found convenient for working in the corn, not something I've tested rigorously. Generally, with more space you get more and bigger ears. A friend spaced some CRG at 6" with 30" between rows last year, and it was totally consistent since he transplanted. He got one-stalk plants with 1 ear per plant, with the grain bearing part of the ears up to about 8". (ie actual ear size larger.) That was under conditions of relatively low fertility. (He tilled under some poor untended sod and used no fertilizer.) So if you want as many plants represented as possible in a population of CRG, yes you can grow them as low as 6" apart. And I suspect you could get away with double rows 30 inches apart too. On the other hand, my grower of CRG in 2014 spaced the plants at 12" and got ear sizes up to 10 inches of grain on the ear, really beautiful big ears, usually 2/plant. Where there are gaps in a row, and a plant has 2' on both sides, CRG tends to make three full-size grain-bearing stalks and produce an ear or two on each. Fertility also affects things. One year we had a glorious winter cover crop of vetch and tilled that in and planted CRG at our ordinary spacing (which ends up being about 6 - 12" but averages about 8"). The CRG, which has been selected for ability to perform under conditions of relatively modest fertility, went totally nuts. Many plants had 3 or 4 stalks with one or two good size ears on every stalk. Thanks Carol for the detailed info. This forum is a great way to save time as I don't have to run with every idea that comes to mind to see if it will work or not, because likely someone else has already given it a try. I'm thinking that part of the spacing issue has to do with access to fertility and water, but I also suspect that some of it may be access to light. In our beds with the 1' equidistant spacing, the plants in the middle of the bed never do as well as those on the edges, even though the compost and water are more concentrated in that part of the bed than near the pathways. I'm hoping that by rearranging the planting density into double rows, all of the plants will be getting about the same amount of sun. I do think I will try one bed with more elbow room to see how the yields compare. I've found that dry bush beans yield better with increased spacing. It seems that some of the spacings recommended for the "French Intensive" and "Square Foot Gardening" systems are way too packed in, both for light and air circulation in our humid climate. Just another example of less is more. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 16, 2014 20:23:43 GMT -5
I usually aim for an average of 8" between plants and 3.5' between rows in our seed production field 2.3 square feet per plant. 1.25 square feet per plant. At 30" row spacing ==> 2.5 square feet per plant. I plant corn at 12" in the row with rows spaced about 30" apart. That's 2.5 square feet per plant. I recently harvested a patch of Glass Gem corn that was planted by a seeder and not thinned. The plants were as close as 4". Some of the plants didn't produce any cobs. Most produced only one cob. Some produced up to three. When I grew glass gem in my garden they were spaced at 1 foot, and produced about 5 cobs per plant. The plants on the ends of the rows produced around 15 cobs. When I was a teenager growing sweet corn for the community, my daddy told me that corn produces about 1 cob per square foot. I've lived by that rule of thumb ever since. It's served me well. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Nov 17, 2014 13:53:30 GMT -5
Speaking of nice pericarps, I wanted to show you this  Please note my camera seems to have yellowed the colors a little. This corn is NOT red, but a surprisingly striking shade of deep fuchsia (kernel pericarp only, the cob, calices, and husk are all colorless. In fact, they are whiter than normal).. Really pretty, and that's coming from a person who is heavily biased AGAINST colored pericarps (since I am working toward a multicolored speckled corn, I really want the pericarps to be all colorless since, in my opinion, most aleurone colors look uglier under a colored pericarp "wash") In fact, the color is so good that, now that I have siphoned off the sample I'm keeping for planting I have put the rest in a little container and come Tuesday (when I have the house to myself) I'm going to heat up some water dig out some fruit and spices and see how this one performs as a chica morada corn. I imagine the beverage will be a bit paler than the normal one (since the corn is fuchsia not deep purple) but should still be pretty. Update I'm afraid the project has hit a bit of a roadblock. While prepping the corn, I found that there was a LOT of rodent damage, plus a smell that makes me think it was probably sprayed with some sort of preservative, so I'm no longer confident it is safe for consumption in it's current condition. I guess final results will have to wait until I plant the part I put to the side for planting, and have clean corn to work with. Based on how far I did get I'm not sure it will be worth it. The corn DOES bleed a little into water, but far weaker than true Morado. Morado liquid usually winds up somewhere between cranberry and grape in color when you're done; this stuff is more or less cotton candy color. Oh and while I forgot to pull some kernels off for parching I did peel one of the ones in the pot, which confirms the underlying corn is a bit too flinty to parch well (that is, into a form I could eat without shattering my teeth). |
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Post by reed on Nov 18, 2014 4:48:31 GMT -5
The notion that flint in parching corn making it too hard to eat makes perfect sense but I don't experience that in most of these ears. I don't understand that. Some I'v tried that are even more flinty don't have that problem, they just don't taste good. As long as they don't have a dent it seems more than OK to have that encapsulating layer of flint around the flour part.
The dented kernels I'v tried do have that quality, like trying to eat gravel. I think overall, they have a smaller percentage of flour. The pure flour kernels I'v tried, Painted Mountain and Cherokee White are plenty soft, but no crunch and taste like paste.
I hope that, flour completely surrounded by a thin layer of flint, isn't just some freak anomaly that I won't be able to reproduce. I don't think it is though or it wouldn't be such a high percentage of the samples I have.
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Post by reed on Nov 18, 2014 6:14:53 GMT -5
Reed: I've been chasing a black/red ear like that in my popcorn project... It consistently ranks the best tasting in the patch, so far I haven't been able to turn it into a great popcorn. (I haven't put much effort into it, just replanting it ear-to-row and detasseling so that it doesn't shed pollen into the rest of the patch.) If you pull it off you will have to give it a new class, all other corn that pops would just be blah in comparison. |
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Post by Walk on Nov 18, 2014 9:05:33 GMT -5
For ears that are a solid color, like Roy's Calais, I've been selecting seed from about 75% red ears (but not dark red) and 25% yellow, which I read somewhere that was the best way to maintain the 2 colors. But in a variety like Cascade Ruby-Gold with a broad range of ear colors, do you select equal amounts of each color or still skew it one way or the other? My planting area is small and can only fit about 200 plants, so I've been saving seed each year and mixing batches from prior years to try to keep the diversity up as much as possible. I may need to give the sweet corn the boot and just grow one corn, that would give me room for another 360 plants. If the Cascade Ruby-Gold makes even a fair sweet corn, it would probably be better for maintaining the diversity of genetics in our limited space.
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Post by reed on Nov 18, 2014 9:44:56 GMT -5
I'm definitely booting the sweet corn unless I can find a co-conspirator to grow it for me someplace else. I'm after a sustainable food crop that can be put up dry for winter and don't think sweet corn qualifies. I would like it to be sort of multi-purpose, recognizing it might not be perfect for any one, but hopefully passable. I am also short on space. I do have room for the 1000 plants but with crows, coons, hail storms and all the other usual villains to consider I don't feel like I can afford split it up. At least not for the first couple years till I get my own seed stock built up.
I am after that flavor of the very dark red pericarp. It so dark that that there is no visible variation on the ear. I don't think it would matter what is under it, it would still look the same. Does Roy's Calais make any ears like that, where every kernel looks exactly the same?
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Post by blueadzuki on Nov 18, 2014 10:46:21 GMT -5
The notion that flint in parching corn making it too hard to eat makes perfect sense but I don't experience that in most of these ears. I don't understand that. Some I'v tried that are even more flinty don't have that problem, they just don't taste good. As long as they don't have a dent it seems more than OK to have that encapsulating layer of flint around the flour part. The dented kernels I'v tried do have that quality, like trying to eat gravel. I think overall, they have a smaller percentage of flour. The pure flour kernels I'v tried, Painted Mountain and Cherokee White are plenty soft, but no crunch and taste like paste. I hope that, flour completely surrounded by a thin layer of flint, isn't just some freak anomaly that I won't be able to reproduce. I don't think it is though or it wouldn't be such a high percentage of the samples I have. Well, if it is I'm finding the" same "freak anomaly" you are at more or less the same rate! The way I look at it, if one or two kernels on one cob look an odd way, it may be a freak anomaly of conditions and possibly non-transmittable. If nearly ALL of the kernels on a LOT of cobs have it, it's probably something you can breed. Hard starch does SOMETIMES soften up a little with parching, but there is a limit, and this corn was passed that. I was on the verge of being a "crystal" (glassy) flint, so basically no soft starch at all. In fact probably the only reason it didn't look glassy was that the pericarp besides being that deep fuchsia had the "frosted" or "velvet" trait, so the kernels were matte. It is also possible that the reason the dent are like gravel is actually that dent. Parching a corn is still expanding it, just like popcorn (only without as much expansion). There probably needs to be a bit of pressure to get that expansion to work. on the shell or capped flint, you have the hard starch covering there to build it up so when it finally blows the expansion works. On dent the pressure may all just immediately blow out through the weak spot. No real pressure builds up, so the hard starch never really expands any. When I have clean corn I can feel safe eating, I'll try and make a comparison parch between a dent and a cap flint which (apart from the hard starch covering on the top) have comparable ratios of hard and soft starch. |
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Post by Walk on Nov 18, 2014 13:19:19 GMT -5
I'm definitely booting the sweet corn unless I can find a co-conspirator to grow it for me someplace else. I'm after a sustainable food crop that can be put up dry for winter and don't think sweet corn qualifies. I would like it to be sort of multi-purpose, recognizing it might not be perfect for any one, but hopefully passable. I am also short on space. I do have room for the 1000 plants but with crows, coons, hail storms and all the other usual villains to consider I don't feel like I can afford split it up. At least not for the first couple years till I get my own seed stock built up. I am after that flavor of the very dark red pericarp. It so dark that that there is no visible variation on the ear. I don't think it would matter what is under it, it would still look the same. Does Roy's Calais make any ears like that, where every kernel looks exactly the same? The Midnight Snack that we grow is not only a great sweet corn but, like many of the old-fashioned type sweets, it makes a terrific parching corn. For that alone, it's hard to think of giving it up. Sounds like the flints aren't the best for parching which would match with the tasting we did several years ago between various corn varieties. Everyone who was in that taste testing preferred the 2 sweet corns we parched (with oil) over the flours and flints. Looking at the harvest from this year, and what I remember from the past, each ear of Roy's Calais is uniform on each individual cob, with variation only between cobs. My understanding with the red coloration on it is that if the color is deep red it's because there is red from both parents and that there are other genes tied in with that combination that can lead to a weaker offspring. Sorry that this is such a poor explanation, but this is what I understand to be the case for this variety. That's why I was wondering if the same holds true for a corn like Cascade Ruby Gold. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 18, 2014 17:10:35 GMT -5
I use dried sweet corn in soups and stews. Either cooking it like beans, or nixtamalizing it first to make hominy. I prefer nixtamalizing because the flavor is better, it cooks quicker, and is more tender.
For market it doesn't matter. I don't have a market for any kind of dried corn other than popcorn, and a limited market for decorative corn.
I attended a seed school a couple of weeks ago. I parched some Astronomy Domine sweet corn for the class. It got lots of rave reviews. It's not at all like the hard grainy things that are typically called "parching corn". I prefer to parch sugary enhanced sweet corn, but it's unreliable in my cold climate and clayish soil, so I stick with old-fashioned sweet corn for parching.
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Post by reed on Nov 18, 2014 19:03:48 GMT -5
Well... now I'm gonna have to get into some of those sweet corn packets and run some more taste tests. You people know so many ways to cook and eat corn that I have never tried or sometimes even heard of. I guess it is a cultural thing. Here there is fresh sweet corn in the summer and cornbread and beans in the winter, that's it except for a little popcorn. I do like hominy but have never had it except from a can, never knew anybody to make it, not even the old and long dead people in my family.
I didn't know that most corn is good sweet in milk stage or that you can make gravy or angle food cake with some kinds. And different colors have different flavors, I mean who (in south east Indiana) woulda thunk it?
If I had lots of space I would try lots of different things but I just got the one little spot. Sometime between now next May I'll have to decide what goes in it.
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Post by Walk on Nov 19, 2014 9:35:33 GMT -5
You people know so many ways to cook and eat corn that I have never tried or sometimes even heard of. I guess it is a cultural thing. The parched sweet corn we've been enjoying for over 30 years wasn't due to any cultural insights. It was literally due to lack of sight that we hit upon this great snack. One evening my husband, Bob, was going to make a batch of popcorn. We were living off-grid, before solar panels, and he was in the kitchen with only candlelight. In the inadequate light he grabbed a jar of what he thought was popcorn, but it was a jar of mature dry sweet corn. Into the hot oil went the corn, followed by the realization of what he had just done (and a few muttered curses). I said to let it fry up and use a slotted spoon to get it out when it was done, maybe it could be used for something. It was one of the greatest kitchen mistakes that we've ever made! |
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Post by reed on Nov 19, 2014 18:15:18 GMT -5
Walk, I love happy accidents! Have you tried the dry sweet corn any other way?
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