Reed's "Dazed & Confused" Corn Projects

[reed]

Well it's time to officially name my corns. Over past couple three seasons I'v accumulated individually packed seed from about 75 sweet plants and about 75 of what I'm calling field corn plants.

Official names are Hoosier Daddy field corn and Hoosier Baby sweet corn. Out of those in each group I have a dozen or so special ears that I want to use as the primary mothers of the new varieties next year.

Common traits I'll be selecting for are short season, I want to be able to use the same spot for other crops after the corn is done and I want the corn drying down in July or early August at the latest. I also want to be able to grow two generations per season if the mood hits me. I'm looking for long slender ears with not more than 12 rows of big kernels, good tip cover, drought and disease tolerance.

I also want colorful plants and kernels, especially in the field corn so that I can sell it for ornamental as I select it into something I can feed the chickens and us. All the ornamental growers here focus on giant long season stuff so if I can grow enough I can swoop in a month or so before them and grab the market at the little grocery and hardware stores.

I have at least 50 varieties in my sweet mix including AD and doubt there is a non hybrid seed in my collection, most are hybrid with hybrids with hybrids. Also included are a number of flour and flints that were detasseled and crossed to sweets and grown again to segregate on their own. Disease tolerant sweets are also mixed into the field corn. I expect to find non sweet kernels in my sweet and sweet kernels in my field for some time. That might be a problem for ornamental so I'll select more heavily against it there.

My field corn isn't quite as diverse as my sweet but this year I added in Neandercorn and Harmony so that should boost the chaos factor some. I might drop in a couple new kinds next year, Seneca Red Stalker and Japonica for a little extra color. A good dose of Painted Mountain is already in there and in the sweet mix as well. In coming seasons I'll select against flint in favor of softer kernels.

I'm thinking of adding a new late season project. I still have a pack of seed from the BIG RED ear I got at a farm market, I think three years ago and it just germ tested 90%. I already crossed it last year with Cherokee White Flour and I'm thinking of crossing them with my late Neandercorn from this year. It would have to be a small patch or rather a couple. I'm thinking just 1/2 dozen late Neander plants detasseled and surrounded by Big Red and the other one just the opposite. Blend the two together 1/2 and 1/2 in both directions and go from there. Haven't thought of a name for it yet.

Goals and methods have changed since I first started this due to knowing a lot more about it now. This forum is a great place to learn stuff!

Here is a re-post of BIG RED's kernels. 


Big Red goes against nearly all my selection criteria, its huge easily 12 feet tall, if I remember right 18 rows of kernels, ears a foot or more long but it is amazing in flavor and an amazing plant. I didn't get any seed from one due to squirrel attack and stupidly didn't get a picture but some, not all of it's plants are dark purple red from root to tassel. It is the only ear like it I'v seen and I don't want it to be lost. I think the late Neandercorn is a worthy mate to try to make something really spectacular if for no other reason just to see if I can. 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 18, 2017 7:16:41 GMT -5 reed said:

Here is a re-post of BIG RED's kernels. 

I'm fantasizing about a corn that pops up purple....

[reed]

I'm imagining the crazy growth habit of the Neandercorn with tillers and shanks sticking out all over the place but with lots of color and making lots of little dark red ears. If Big Red wasn't so giant and long season I'd try to blend it into my regular field corn but I'm chicken to try that for fear it could really set me back on the goal of fast maturity.

I really need bigger and or more gardens.

[reed]

I sat down last night and sorted through most of my seed packs and was way way off on estimated number of individual ears. Was pretty close on field but got way more than 75 sweet and a bunch that are marked as ones I want for mother plants.

They include:
5 tagged as 8 row ears
3 tagged as 10 row ears
19 Detasseled Painted Mountain x sweet F1, most with uniform color other than pericarp
4 Painted Mountain x sweet x itself in one season and segregated sweet
4 Segregated sweet Neandercorn
5 Astronomy Domine mothers that are marked as extra sweet
3 that are marked as extra long shank
3 marked extra good tip cover
3 Cascade Cream Cap x sweet
4 red kernel ears marked extra extra sweet
2 Oaxacan Green dent x sweet
1 (Oaxacan Green dent x sweet) x sweet that grew volunteer second growth in the same season and with no rain
2 Accidentally mixed packs segregated sweet from this years field corn patch including some sweet Harmony

It's not quite as bad as it sounds cause some of those above are tagged more than once. For example an 8 row extra sweet is counted twice in the numbers. Still whine, whine, whine, I need more space.

[reed]

Well, I figured it out, pretty simple. I got more than enough seed from my tagged ears to plant my sweet patch, don't need to plant the rest. The tagged packs should also represent pretty much the full variety in my collection so I won't lose much if anything, genetic wise.

I occurs to me to change the name of my sweet corn to just "Sweet Zea Mays".  Simply descriptive and technically accurate. 

[reed]

I started to make a new thread called "breeding for colored pericarp" but decided instead to just come back here my old thread. On surface and in the seed box it might look like I am most interested in sweet corn but actually I consider sweet corn a summer time treat more than actual food and this year I'm putting a lot more focus on my field corn.

I want to be able to sell it as an ornamental corn but I also want it to be a good flour corn. For the ornamental part it needs to be colorful but it also needs to be fast maturing so I can beat the other growers to market with dry ears perhaps even before they are quite ready to harvest.

On color, while I guess mixed up ears may have market appeal I want mine to be like Carol Deppe's manna series where each ear is a solid color. I have some of her white and starburst seed which is already variable just in pericarp and will use it to add that trait into mine. I will also use some of my own Painted Mountain x sweet mix for the same purpose. I'll call it PMS. 

I know I'm messing my project up some by including the PM x sweet but I also want the extra diversity and possible desirable traits like stalk strength and tip cover that those sweet varieties may also have. I'll just have to sort out any sweet kernels that show up. Most of the sweet pollen that crossed the PM that year was from white varieties but I may also need to cull some yellow endosperm in future as well. While the PMxS seed I'll use is all from single colored ears with white endosperm I expect I'll have some aleurone color to cull out later as well. 

So I'm looking for quick maturity, soft white endosperm, colorless aleurone and variable pericarp. I have a grex of absolutely beautiful large, all white kernels from oxbowfarm which I will refer to in future as Oxbow White Flour or OWF. 

I also learned from one of Tim's youtube videos of a Mexican landrace called Zapalote Chico (PI 601500) and was able to obtain some from GRIN. It is described as having purple plants and cobs, white endosperm with pink tinged white pericarp and the seed they sent fit that description. I would call it a little on the dent side but I think I can breed that out fairly quickly. It has short maturity of around 75 days it's native habitat and is not day length sensitive so I think it should work well in my project. What I liked initially is it makes a compound called maysin in it's silks that kills or at least inhibits ear worms, the rest is of it's attributes are gravy. 

I decided not to use a second sample I got from GRIN (PI 618810) because it says it takes 83 days to silk and it is a product of a commercial company. The PVP is long expired but I still don't want it in my project. 

The OWF, I understand is a grex of eastern white flour varieties but shorter season than Cherokee White Flour which is the only other eastern flour corn I'v grown. I expect it should perform much better here than do Carol's manna series or PM, which mature too fast on weak stalks and the ears overshoot the shucks. 

I expect the OWF and the ZC to be primary foundation of my new variety. I will also include some of Joseph Lofthouse 's Harmony grain corn for a little extra diversity. Those more floury and white seeds from my crop last year. There is some flint floating around in there so I know I will be detasseling the Harmony for the first couple seasons and look for white flour in the results. 

I also know I want some little isolated patches of the ZC and OWF to keep pure for the following season and some crossed with the PMxS and Manna corns. 

Question is how best to move the variable pericarp into the white flour? I'm thinking since pericarp is maternal  if I detassel the ZC and OWF I should get ears that have clear pericarp in the first generation. IS that correct? If so then then any non-pericarp color will be easy to see and cull. 

If I get lucky I might have some ears that are all white even though I will know they were pollinated by the variable pericarp corns.  If that happened I would be on my way and could expect variable pericarp in the next generation. Then I could just cross that back with the pure ZC and OWF. does that sound correct?

From then on just keep culling errant color while selecting for the big floury kernels of the OWF and the purple stalks and maysin production of the ZC. 

I'll keep trying to work in the dark, dark red from Big Red too but it is way long season and lots of aleurone color so don't know how that will work. 

[oxbowfarm]

Hey reed, There isn't so much pericarp color diversity in readily available flour corns. I have noticed this corn on GRIN before, and its clearly a single color pericarp flour corn, that some guy pulled out of Shawnee White, which is in the Eastern White Flour complex.

In terms of pericarp color diversity, the champion is still bronze beauty flint in my experience. Its a flint though, but it IS a white endosperm flint. So you might consider it. I've got about a gallon of seed in my freezer if you want some.

[reed]

Mar 27, 2018 20:03:55 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

In terms of pericarp color diversity, the champion is still bronze beauty flint in my experience. Its a flint though, but it IS a white endosperm flint. So you might consider it. I've got about a gallon of seed in my freezer if you want some.

Thanks, that Bronze Beauty looks like it has some nice dark colors, most of what I have now is a little on the pastel side. I'd love to have a small sample. Let me know if there is anything I might have that interests you.