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Post by RpR on Jun 22, 2016 12:54:45 GMT -5
Now due to other facts my garden this year is more of an after thought rather than planned. So I only bought one new packet of corn seed.
I planted three year old and the one new one. The new one from Burpee, new to me Sunny Days hybrid was planted in two gardens. In both gardens the germination has been pathetic.
I planted from Native Seeds Tarahumar Tuxpeno down south and germination has been middling affected by a huge emergence of volunteer potatoes, I am guessing from buried potato berries.
The other two are True Gold from Peaceful Valley and Country Gentleman from said same. The True Gold is pathetic but the Country Gentleman was combined with a cob of hybrid CG left over from last year so I do not know which seeds germinated but that plot is the only one doing well.
Both gardens were reinvigorated with sheep manure last spring so the soil is not lacking but even though not much thought was put into the planting this year the corn results are annoying. I never thought volunteer potatoes would be a weed but it is darn near that bad.
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Post by mskrieger on Jun 23, 2016 7:15:52 GMT -5
It's so hard to know why there's poor germination with bought seed. You never know how it was treated and stored prior to you getting your hands on it. But I've had packets of flint corn seed sit in my house under wildly varied conditions--80F--50F, humidity high and low--still germinate well four years later.
But because of the varied sources and varieties you mentioned, and the only patch doing well is the one with fresh, hybrid seed, I'm going to guess that weather/soil conditions were tough for corn in your garden this year, and that the hybrid is the only variety with enough vigor to overcome.
And I feel you on the potato volunteers! Somehow I always get a bunch, even though they supposedly don't survive soil frozen 15" deep.
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Post by RpR on Aug 8, 2016 18:00:03 GMT -5
Of my corn that came up, it seems to being producing well. I had to stand up, using rods to hold them up, some stalks after a nasty wind storm that dropped a branch on my new old 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88. 31,000 miles no rust and by the grace of God, the other tree stopped all but a few light branches from hitting the car.
The one new package, of sweet corn, that had a whopping eight producing stalks, out of four rows six feet long, produced some nice ears, full to the tip.
My year old Southwestern Indian sweet corn seems to be doing well but the ears are too young to see how well.
The flour corn is the one that produced the most stalks even though a few around the edge probably are from a fourth type planted that was nothing to write home about.
I am going to see how well the potatoes that grew up inside the corn field did. They were all volunteer and some were ravaged by CPB but it seems some were not tasty to CPBs as they were pretty much untouched.
The Lady Bugs that probably controlled the CPB last year did not show up this year until I found some last week. The taters did not seem to affect the corn growth.
Up north here the same sweet corn that had few viable seeds down south has done better but even though planted earlier than that down south is behind by weeks. The mix of open pollinated and hybrid country gentleman, I have up here, has produced a nice stand but is way behind all the other corn. It is just starting to tassel and I will find out how good the ears are in a couple of weeks.
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Post by RpR on Sept 9, 2016 15:28:02 GMT -5
Well I picked my sweetcorn up north.
The plot with the mixed hybrid and open pollinated Country Gentlemen gave odd results.
A: Some is past eating stage and some still has young silk. B: The ears are a white yellow mix with most cobs being shoe peg but a few standard with a mix of yellow-white and pure yellow, although that could be a bleed over from another stand. C: Even with the dense planting some ears are not full to the tip.
I picked my Southwestern sweet corn and it produced well with full cobs about six to eight inches in length but I forgot to bring them up here so they are still in the fridge down there. They looked good though.
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Post by RpR on Sept 26, 2016 20:19:28 GMT -5
I noticed as I was taking the stalks of the hybrid Country Gentlmen sweet corn, planted along side open pollinated CG, that the stalks, most likely of the seed taken from a cob of the hybrid CG were reddish in color. Now I saved one large, ten inches by two inches, cob of the cross bred from being next to each other corn that was produced this year. It was shoe peg in form while also having yellow and white kernels.
If I plant that cob next year what do some of you experienced with specilized corn breed think it will produce? '
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