CORN 2018

[RpR]

After a huge crop of 9 whole stalks in 2017 it can only get better.
Now I am starting this thread early as I have the desire to put a good garden in next year, that has been gone for awhile; of course that means failures will hurt twice as much as they do when you do not really give a damn.

I am going forward to the past.
As of now I am probably going to put in.

-Eureka Ensilage
-Goliath Silo
-Boone County White
-Appalachian Heirloom Long-Eared
-Pungo Creek
-Hickory Cane Dent
-Pride of Saline Yellow
-Paraguayan Chippa Corn

Sweet
-Aunt Mary
-Buhl
-Original 8 Row Golden Bantam

Three are repeats, most are very tall but these are the types that I have had most success with least effort.
May make changes but as I used to eat and grow a larger amount of sweet corn, too many who I grew it for are now dead and I just do not have the love I used to for it.

[oxbowfarm]

Do you isolate them much? Blue always seems to get all over the place for me, I've got a tiny amt of blue and blue speckled aleurone kicking around in my flint that I don't seem to be able to get rid of, even though I never plant a visibly blue kernel. I've got lots of white endosperm I need to eliminate, but I need to get into selfing father plants in nursery rows to truly start getting rid of all the white.

The Paraguayan Chipa looks interesting, I've not seen a yellow flour corn that bright, if the reality matches Baker Creeks pic.

[RpR]

I have had little bleed, i believe partly because most years I do not isolate but some years planted so much that there was little wind drift as the wind stops at the outside blocks.
If you have very tall corn growing on the North side, most open, and it is very long term, it will not tassel till others are done, and as it is very tall, it blocks the wind .
My garden in in a drift free, by that I mean in heavy snow with wind, the garden contains no drifts, so except for the outside two rows, there is rarely sign of bleeding.
I can put blue next to white and as I said outside of the edge rows, there is rarely signs of bleeding over.
If I ever were to do a serious project I would do differently but do not have the room for serious separation except by tassel time where I would plant types that are weeks apart and de-tassel.

I have some years saved ears from edge rows and planted again the next year to see if there is sign of hybrids and white has always come up white.
I have started staying away from South West Indian type maize as I found the stalks rather than lodging simply snap-off like an Oak branch. If they do lodge, when you try to pick them up, some times no matter how carefully they still snap.
You probably have a large area, know your winds.
The one problem with mine, in town, with buildings acting as both barriers and wind deflectors, as happened two or three years ago, there was heavy, heavy wind and it acted like a dust devil had gone through my corn patch.
They were lodged in every direction and semi-twisted together. Fortunately that rarely happens.
One bad thing, my neighbor to the North had derelict cars in his driveway that also acted as wind blocks but his grandmother kicked him out and is selling the house.

[steev]

It's hard when you adjust to prevailing indolence, and then somebody decides to up-grade things; there goes the neighborhood.

[oxbowfarm]

toomanyirons just a response to your notes with regards to plant spacing. After reading Carol Deppe's Resilient Gardener I started planting very thickly and thinning for vigor. I don't know if it has improved my cold soil emergence and seedling vigor but I can say that I lose almost no plants to bird pulling anymore, which was a huge issue the first few years I was growing corn here. Redwing blackbirds, starlings, and crows for the most part. I attribute this to improved selection for strong root growth over shoot growth pre-emergence. But I don't have any data to back that up, just much better stands than I had at first.

I really like this video that Frank Kutka and Dave Christensen made on selecting seedlings this way. You can see how ruthless he is when he is selecting. I know I've badmouthed Painted Mtn for the Eastern climate, but I think Dave Christensen is a giant of a corn breeder.

The one problem with deliberately overplanting this way is that you have to get in there and thin the hell out of it or the corn ends up choking itself out and its just about good for nothing but pasture or maybe silage. You have to be able to get in there at V5-V7 and remove all the extra seedlings before they start crowding each other.

[richardw]

oxbowfarm that makes a lot of sense selecting for 'strong root growth over shoot growth pre-emergence'. Blackbirds have in the past given my emerging corn seedlings ase holes so ive been using second hand vineyard nets which does the trick nicely, before using bets i remember having 100% bird-pulled and in my soft loose loam soil stuff pulls out really easily. Does a clay based soil help reduce the amount of bird-pull?, something i had never thought of up till now.

[richardw]

My current popcorn mix i sowed as thickly as what Dave Christensen did in his video and pretty much selected for the same reasons too, but plants that dont unfold there leafs is something i haven't selected for and i will from now on, i had a couple that did.

[steev]

You solved your bird issue with WWII army chow? How did you get them to line up for it?

[reed]

This year I'm going on with  my sweet and field corn landraces but direction has changed a lot due to acquiring some new genetics. 

I haven't grown it yet but I am very excited to get some wonderful looking white flour corn from oxbowfarm . My field corn mix up till now had a lot of western flour like the Hopi corns, Painted Mountain and also included several flints. Last year I added in Joseph's Harmony Grain corn and even some Neandercorn. 

I want to be able to sell my corn for ornamental cause that is almost the only produce that is profitable on a small scale around here and had expected it to take a  long time for it to also be useful as food. I think though with the new eastern white corn I may be able to skip the  period where it is only good for ornamental.

All flinty kernels will be culled from this years crop leaving the western flour stains that did produce here over the last three years. That is maybe 5% of those planted that held up good enough to make nice seeds, most fell over or molded as they dried. I'm removing the neandercorn from this mix but including the more flour looking kernels of Joseph's Harmony grain corn. I will include also a few seeds each from about 20 ears of Painted Mountain x (sweet mix) and detassel them. I figure it shouldn't take too long to select out the sweet genes and hopefully keep some eastern adaptation disease tolerance and the like from the sweet corns.

ALL pollen for the field corn patch this year will be provided by the new white flour corn. 

In the sweet patch I'm going totally nuts. I'm going to use my accumulated mix from the last few seasons and merge it with Neandercorn and Zea diploperennis. I loved growing the Neandercorn last year and had some sweet kernels show up on four different plants.

It occurred to me one thing about all the elaborate breeding of sweet corn that goes on is to make it so it stays sweet after you pick it. I don't care about that cause I'm not a market grower but it would be nice for it to not all mature at the same time.   Well Neandercorn in my garden continued to bloom and produce continuously on the same plant for weeks. Why not breed that in to a sweet corn? Indeterminate sweet corn, sounds pretty good to me. 

Here are examples of some of the seeds I'll be using. 


First row are those western flour corns X sweet mix. The two on the right are second generation segregated sweet, second from right is from Oaxacan Green Dent. These except for the sweet ones are same as will be included in the flour patch and detasseled in both patches.

second row is just examples of kernels I like from my sweet seeds accumulated over last few seasons. I have well over 100 packs, each from a different mother. 69 of those packs are tagged as special. That might be for flavor, stalk strength, low row number or what ever I liked about it at the time. Seed form those 69 mothers will provide most of the pollen.

Third row is the Neandercorn that will provide the abundance of ears per plant. It makes lots of tillers, lots of shanks and lots of ears per shank. The first kernel on the left is an example of what a sweet Neander kernel looks like, a perfectly formed although small sweet corn seed. I have about 50 of these sweet neander seeds from four different mothers. Next in that row are "normal" looking Neandercorn seeds, they will be detasseled as much as possible but I expect due to the habit of growing tassels all over the place and any time it wants some pollen will escape form them.
Far right in that row is an actual Zea diploperennis seed of which I was gifted small amount. This will be planted in a special spot at the upper end of the garden that drains good and offers the best chance of a perennial plant of any kind surviving the wet cold clay. Hopefully it will live till the next year and also hopefully it will bloom this years so I can make a new original z diploperennis x z mays hybrid using my sweet corn mix to make the F1. 

Bottom row Is sweet segregated Harmony grain corn also from Joseph Lofthouse , I'll be including but also detasseling them in the sweet patch.

[RpR]

Of the types I listed above I put in all but three of them.
Two up North and the rest down South.
Those down South only went in approx. three weeks ago so they are a month behind and only about three or so inches high.
Those up North are over knee high and doing far better than I expected.
So far it has been a great year weather wise for the gardens.
What a difference when last year corn was a total failure with ninteey nine percent never coming up out of three varieties.

[RpR]

Aunt Mary's up North is tassling and is very healthy.
Pride of Saleen up North is ten feet high and looks great. If I plant it again I will double kernel spacing to eight inches . They are doing well more crowded but the leaves are near three feet long on the ends and open sides.

Corn down South was mostly knee high by the 9th of July.
Surprisingly the Chipa seed had the best germination, with the sweet corns the second best.
Did not expect that as the dent corns were planted in the best soil area.
I will have to haul in several trailer loads of Sheep manure so it is not so uneven in height next year. Plenty of rain so dry soil is not the fault.
I had a few stalks that were yellow two weeks ago, so out of curiosity I trickled some straight rapid-grow liquid fertilizer down the middle of the stalks.
Did not rain for two days after; they are now nice and green with no leaf burn.

[walt]

Some years ago, 15+, I grew Pride of Saline corn and Cherokee Blue and White corn.
Pride of Saline I grew because I live near the Saline River and I thought it would be well adapted.
Cherokee Blue and White I grew because Carl Barns gave it to me with high recommendations.
Both produced well.
My neighbor who lived 100 miles west of Mexico City offered to make me some tortillias, so we ground some Cherokee B&W and the tortillias were wonderful!  They had a rich flavor I'd never tasred before.  This with nothing but corn flour, salt, and water.  I thought it was because the corn was so fresh.
Later, maybe a week later, we tried the Pride of Saline.  The tortillias tasted like they were made with store-bought corn meal.  Nothing wrong with it, just not great,
After that, I never grew Pride of Saline again.
My Pride of Saline seed came from Seed Savers Exchange.  Yours may be different.  And grown in a different climate etc., its flavor might be different.

[RpR]

I am trying to get my seed planting more organized.
I am starting to wonder as my memory has never been great but I have chart and write down what is plant where, or outside of one, may be two for some reason, the rest is forgotten.
I wrote and charted this year but now I cannot find the paper it is written on.
I think mine is from Seed Savers but not sure.
In the past five years, I have had total, corn germination failure twice. One of the things that annoys me and mystifies me, is the soil down South where I plante the sweet corn and it is coming up real well, is the same soil last year, no changes, that near zero stalks of sweet corn came up.
The kernels this year were ordered on-line where as last year, something I rarely do now, I bought them at a hardware store and they were a major brand but then dent corns I ordered online last year also had near genuine zero gemnination and they were purchased on-line.
All were planted last year at the tech. prime time , whereas this year, it was actually later than the norm and I rarely, very rarely plant corn that late.

On a related, unrelated side, this year I put potatoes where the dent corn totally failed last year, and that is an area where for some odd reason, potatoes never do as well as they do twenty feet farther West.(Tech. same soil, only difference is soil farther west has coal dust from former horse barn fifty years earlier)
Plus, I planted a lot in June.
Now I have never, never before planted potatoes up here successfully in June, never, but this year they seem to be doing well .
Odd year.

[RpR]

Jul 24, 2018 13:47:22 GMT -5 walt said:

Some years ago, 15+, I grew Pride of Saline corn and Cherokee Blue and White corn.
Pride of Saline I grew because I live near the Saline River and I thought it would be well adapted.
Cherokee Blue and White I grew because Carl Barns gave it to me with high recommendations.
Both produced well.
My neighbor who lived 100 miles west of Mexico City offered to make me some tortillias, so we ground some Cherokee B&W and the tortillias were wonderful!  They had a rich flavor I'd never tasred before.  This with nothing but corn flour, salt, and water.  I thought it was because the corn was so fresh.
Later, maybe a week later, we tried the Pride of Saline.  The tortillias tasted like they were made with store-bought corn meal.  Nothing wrong with it, just not great,
After that, I never grew Pride of Saline again.
My Pride of Saline seed came from Seed Savers Exchange.  Yours may be different.  And grown in a different climate etc., its flavor might be different.

When read about people making their own corn flour it some times make me feel bad I do not as have plenty to do it with but except for occasional corn bred I really have no used for it; I also prefer flour tortillas over corn.
Up to twenty years ago I used to bake alot but now I have gotten to darn lazy.
The comparing of corn intrigues me but now that I seem to have lost 90 percent of my ability to taste permanently that would be a waste of time.

My pride of Saline was from Sand Hill ,I checked, and am impressed with their seed germination for that one ; at the same time I got my Chipa Yellow from Native Seed and where as in the past I have had total failure from some of theirs this year theirs germinated as well as the Pride of Saline.
All of my sweet corn germinated well include some Candy Corn my cousin gave me he bought last year, which surprised me as he just went to Menards and bought it there, while corn I bought from Menard's last year was a total failure.
I am crediting my garden success this year to the weather mostly as it has been great.

[RpR]

Wind in the past two week did an odd job on my corn patches, one sweet corn stand was 90 percent lodged while the other two had a stalk here and there tipped.
My tall corn stands did most well resisting but oddly corn stalks in the middle of the patch were tipped one here, one there in different directions.
I think the weight of the ears of corn may have been part of the reason and some snapped of half-way up and other were leaning.
When pulled the cobs some leaner popped at least a foot.

At first I only pulled cobs t check for worms-- the sweet corn amazingly had near zero corn worms.
The field corn, first cob, worms, second cob, worms, third cob worms -- six out of seven cobs had worms so I pulled all, or most as it got dark before I could finish and I had pulled out the lodged stalks which took more time than I though it would.
Sadly I had hoped for a freeze so the stalks would dry quicker but it did not freeze or even light frost and most of the corn had not even started denting yet, so now rather than denting and drying on the stalk I have it n the garage and house porch.

I had at least two types of corn worms, ear worms and European corn borers, but from all the worms I squished between my fingers I would bet I have at least one more species also from their appearance.
I planted late corn late n the year so it is my fault the corn is this far behind but I am still surprised that the corn worms hit this late in the season, as had I not squished them, there is not way they could have pupated into moths before a true freeze hit.

This is the first year I have seen major bleed over in corn patches.
The Pride of Saline did not have much cross over from white types, but it bled over into the white types to the greatest degree I have ever seen.
Usually the outside rows will have genetic bleed over but of my white types even stalks on the far side of the patch had yellow bleed over from the Pride of Saline.

My sweet corn down South , I was amazed at how spindly the majority of the stalks were. I did not crowd with seeds at least six inches apart but most were no larger in diameter at the widest part than my index finger.
They produced ears well but in all the decades I have done this usually there are few spindly ones, not the majority.