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Post by reed on Apr 11, 2018 20:17:38 GMT -5
Looks like I may end up with just the one plant,the others have still not sprouted. The one that did is growing nicely, the stem is turning a nice reddish purple. I'm gonna up pot it and maybe give a chicken turd tomorrow. Supposed to be close to 80 F tomorrow so I'm thinking it can even go outside for a little while.
When it comes time I'll have to revisit this tread to review procedure on manipulating the daylight period. I'm really hoping for some hybrid seeds with z dip as the mother.
The very hard woody seed coat is interesting. I wonder if in the wild it needs to go through the digestion of some grazing animal. Something that is after the plant itself and just ingests the seeds along with it.
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Post by reed on May 10, 2018 21:52:55 GMT -5
I gave up on the rest of the z dip seeds a couple weeks ago. The one plant shot up to about a foot and a half tall and started failing. Stopped growing taller and lower leaves especially dried up. I up-potted and fed it and it has been outside for a couple weeks.
Looks real bad from a distance but turns out looks are deceiving. Up close it has 5 large healthy looking shoots coming up around the base. Stems are way fatter and darker red than the original shoot. I have a patch of early sweet corn planted and plan to plant just a few seeds weekly or so in hopes of having pollen available to make the cross. Assuming of course I can get silks on the z dip.
Also have some of my sweet Neandercorn from last year in the patch already planted, which I will detassel. Based on how how it grows, continuing to make new silks and tassels for a long time, I think my indeterminate sweet corn might be possible. By remaking the initial F1 with z dip as the mother and back-crossing for a generation or two, it might even be perennial in warmer climates.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 11, 2018 0:02:26 GMT -5
reed: Thanks for the grow report. I expect the Z diploperennis to flower in mid-September.
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Post by reed on May 11, 2018 8:03:23 GMT -5
Joseph Lofthouse, do you do anything as far as manipulating the day length? Or does it flower on it's own for you?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on May 11, 2018 8:20:53 GMT -5
Joseph Lofthouse, do you do anything as far as manipulating the day length? Or does it flower on it's own for you? The mid-september flowering date is without trying to manipulate daylength. Check out alanbishop.proboards.com/post/117971/thread for a link to one way to artificially trigger flowering. |
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Post by reed on May 27, 2018 5:12:37 GMT -5
I got tired of messing with keeping the Z dip plant watered in that pot so I planted it in the ground. It now has five large shoots or maybe tillers is the right word and two smaller ones. The stems are about the size of a pencil and a little bit red colored at the base. The root system is very vigorous, it was in a good sized pot and in another week or so would have been getting pot bound. As it was the roots held the soil together but just a little bit of circling inside the bounds of the pot.
The original stem from when it sprouted had developed into a thin woody stalk that fell over. The growth on the end is very strong and lots of root nubs at it's base and along the thin stem. Obviously intended by the plant to flop over and root and form a clump. I pinned that stem to the ground with a dirt clod and am thinking about after sufficient time for it to develop it's own roots I may sever it off and see how it works as a propagation method. The leaves on this oldest stem are wider and darker green and the whirl of new growth is tighter.
My primary sweet corn that I'm in hopes will provide pollen for a new F1 with Z dip as mother, will I'm sure, be way too early so a second planted small patch of about 20 plants is now up about four inches and I planted another similar small patch yesterday. Will probably plant a third and maybe a fourth if it seems necessary. I'll see how it goes and decide later on if and how to manipulate light on the Z dip.
Mixed in the primary sweet patch is two short rows of last years "Sweet Neander", the largest most sweet looking seeds from that crop. Germination here was poor, probably around 50 % actually, I don't know why. Also there is big variation in vigor. Out of it though there were seven extremely vigorous plants. They are probably the largest and most vigorous of all the plants in the entire first planted patch. Yesterday I culled everything in those rows except them. I'll decide later on how to go about pollination between them and the other sweets.
What I'm looking for in this project is keep the crazy multi tiller habit of the Z dip as well as the branching and continuous flowering mixed with various early maturity sweets to make an indeterminate sweet corn. Each plant producing ten or more decent sized ears over a long period rather than all at once. I could be wrong but based on how the Neandercorn grew last year, I don't think it will be too hard to do.
I have noting to back it up but wonder if those traits and especially the perennial nature of the Z dip could be mitochondrial, which is why I want to remake the F1 with Z dip as the mother.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 27, 2018 14:42:59 GMT -5
What I'm looking for in this project is keep the crazy multi tiller habit of the Z dip as well as the branching and continuous flowering mixed with various early maturity sweets to make an indeterminate sweet corn. Each plant producing ten or more decent sized ears over a long period rather than all at once. I could be wrong but based on how the Neandercorn grew last year, I don't think it will be too hard to do. I have noting to back it up but wonder if those traits and especially the perennial nature of the Z dip could be mitochondrial, which is why I want to remake the F1 with Z dip as the mother. i like this idea! i think you may be on to something! I am very interested in what you come up with. Are you planning on backcrossing neadercorn back to the wild parent species? I think that also might produce something interesting. I'm glad my original request for the seed from GRIN has produced such an interesting project.  |
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Post by reed on May 30, 2018 3:52:52 GMT -5
I'v been thinking about it and I guess my first priority is to just get a new F1 with Z dip as mother. As far as I can tell the original cross(es) for Neandercorn was the other way around.
The Neandercorn has multiple stalks but now that I see it they are not at all like the Z dip. They in ways were not even like normal tillers, more like low branches, they didn't come up from below the ground but rather branched off just above ground or even higher. The Z dip stalks are from below ground, like some kind of clumping grass, I guess because of rhizome type roots.
The rhizome type roots and the multiple stalks must be related and I am guessing the only way to keep them is with Z dip mothers. I also keep remembering when Carol Deppe said she likes to use the wilder parent as mother when doing wide crosses.
So the plan is to try to get some ears on the Z dip that I know were pollinated by the short season sweets. Then in next season try to grow them and pollinate again with the sweets. That should give me some seeds that would be 1/4 Z dip and 3/4 sweet but still carrying the maternal line back to Z dip. I think that might be a place to start selecting for the growth habits of Z dip but with larger sweet ears.
If it works and epending on what I end up with, I plan to offer lots of F1 seeds out for trades. Sweet corn isn't really a priority for me but this project is just so fun, I want to keep it going but on a small scale.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 30, 2018 12:42:01 GMT -5
I'v been thinking about it and I guess my first priority is to just get a new F1 with Z dip as mother. As far as I can tell the original cross(es) for Neandercorn was the other way around. The Neandercorn has multiple stalks but now that I see it they are not at all like the Z dip. They in ways were not even like normal tillers, more like low branches, they didn't come up from below the ground but rather branched off just above ground or even higher. The Z dip stalks are from below ground, like some kind of clumping grass, I guess because of rhizome type roots. The rhizome type roots and the multiple stalks must be related and I am guessing the only way to keep them is with Z dip mothers. I also keep remembering when Carol Deppe said she likes to use the wilder parent as mother when doing wide crosses. So the plan is to try to get some ears on the Z dip that I know were pollinated by the short season sweets. Then in next season try to grow them and pollinate again with the sweets. That should give me some seeds that would be 1/4 Z dip and 3/4 sweet but still carrying the maternal line back to Z dip. I think that might be a place to start selecting for the growth habits of Z dip but with larger sweet ears. If it works and epending on what I end up with, I plan to offer lots of F1 seeds out for trades. Sweet corn isn't really a priority for me but this project is just so fun, I want to keep it going but on a small scale. Well, i think it's a good plan even if it does not have the effect you want. getting more diverse mitochondrial DNA is not a bad idea either way. (do plants have mitochondria? if not, something similar). Anyway, i seem to remember joseph mentioning many years ago that when that big corn rust or whatever disease hit the united states and wiped out like 80% of the corn (or something like that) that they all were genetically related and had the same mitochondrial dna line. I might be getting some of my details wrong, but you get the idea. More genetic diversity, especially in the mother line is a great idea, and maybe even desperately needed. |
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Post by nkline on May 30, 2018 14:55:00 GMT -5
I'v been thinking about it and I guess my first priority is to just get a new F1 with Z dip as mother. As far as I can tell the original cross(es) for Neandercorn was the other way around. The Neandercorn has multiple stalks but now that I see it they are not at all like the Z dip. They in ways were not even like normal tillers, more like low branches, they didn't come up from below the ground but rather branched off just above ground or even higher. The Z dip stalks are from below ground, like some kind of clumping grass, I guess because of rhizome type roots. The rhizome type roots and the multiple stalks must be related and I am guessing the only way to keep them is with Z dip mothers. I also keep remembering when Carol Deppe said she likes to use the wilder parent as mother when doing wide crosses. So the plan is to try to get some ears on the Z dip that I know were pollinated by the short season sweets. Then in next season try to grow them and pollinate again with the sweets. That should give me some seeds that would be 1/4 Z dip and 3/4 sweet but still carrying the maternal line back to Z dip. I think that might be a place to start selecting for the growth habits of Z dip but with larger sweet ears. If it works and epending on what I end up with, I plan to offer lots of F1 seeds out for trades. Sweet corn isn't really a priority for me but this project is just so fun, I want to keep it going but on a small scale. Well, i think it's a good plan even if it does not have the effect you want. getting more diverse mitochondrial DNA is not a bad idea either way. (do plants have mitochondria? if not, something similar). Anyway, i seem to remember joseph mentioning many years ago that when that big corn rust or whatever disease hit the united states and wiped out like 80% of the corn (or something like that) that they all were genetically related and had the same mitochondrial dna line. I might be getting some of my details wrong, but you get the idea. More genetic diversity, especially in the mother line is a great idea, and maybe even desperately needed. Southern Leaf Blight |
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Post by reed on Jun 6, 2018 8:56:35 GMT -5
Here is what my Z dip plant looks like this morning. The stalk to the right that is leaning also t the right is the stem that first came up. It is well rooted down on it's own now and I just severed it from the main clump. If you look close just left of that one large leaf sticking out by itself you can see the little yellow straw looking stem that was connecting it.  I checked back and saw the plant first sprouted in late February. That means late June will be it's 120 days. The number stated that is necessary for flowering maturity. I'm gonna wait just another week or so and dig that severed stalk up and plant it by itself so I can easily cover it with a large cardboard box everyday to cut the light down to 10 or 12 hours. Don't remember which right off so need to look that up again too. Anyway, will see if I can get flowering to coincide with any of the sweet plants I have growing. Interesting on the sweet neander plants is none of them have tillers, they look basically the same as many of the other plants in the patch. I have tagged 4 other plants with large tillers. I'm hoping that one, those tillers make good secondary ears and two, those tillers tassel later than the main stalk to coincide with the main Z dip clump. I will of course have to get a bigger cardboard box for that I suppose but crossing a plant with productive tillers to the Z dip I think would help in creating the clumping indeterminate sweet corn I'm shooting for. |
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Post by reed on Jun 12, 2018 4:25:05 GMT -5
I transplanted the individual stalk of the Z dip plant yesterday. Wow, this stuff has roots and it grows fast, makes Johnson grass look wimpy.
I'm gonna start covering it to induce flowering to see how that works. The main clump is getting out of hand as far as doing that, I don't have a box or garbage can big enough for its' spread. I guess I could just leave some stems exposed or maybe cut off the ones that stick out too far.
Does anyone know how big this stuff actually gets? It doesn't seem to want to get real tall, at least not yet. The clump just keeps spreading out with new stems. They come up and are skinny compared to the older ones and I think they will stay that way comparably. Then in a couple days they are just as fat as the older ones and there are more new skinny ones.
My experience with exotic plants or plants from very different climates is generally one of disappointment. This stuff is completely different, it seems to love it here. Might be good a thing that it isn't hardy, it might take the place if it was. Man, I hope I can get my F1 with it as mother.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jun 12, 2018 9:22:12 GMT -5
I transplanted the individual stalk of the Z dip plant yesterday. Wow, this stuff has roots and it grows fast, makes Johnson grass look wimpy. [...] Does anyone know how big this stuff actually gets? At my place, Zea diploperennis stalks reach about 2 feet long. |
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Post by walt on Jun 12, 2018 10:55:50 GMT -5
That's how I remember it? 2 to 2 1/2 feet.
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Post by reed on Jun 13, 2018 3:55:54 GMT -5
Good to know, it might be a little taller but not much and the older stalks don't seem to be growing or if so very slowly. It must be about mature for height, which makes sense on why it is growing all the new stalks instead.
I wonder if that means it is ready to flower, assuming I can appropriately control light exposure.
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